Tech: Amazon Echo Dot (4th Gen) review

A client of mine was kind enough to send me a small Christmas gift - a fourth-generation Amazon Echo Dot home "smart speaker":

The Echo Dot is one of those products that nobody needs but everybody can find a use for. You can rig it to control your lights, you can ask it what the weather is going to be like, you can set up a home intercom. I grant that Jeff Bezos might be using the voice-recognition data for something vaguely sinister, but if you're hooking one of these suckers up to your home wi-fi, privacy probably isn't your chief concern.

In my case, we used the Echo Dot to play background Christmas music for our family get-togethers. The sound quality isn't anything to write home about, but it was really easy to do (as simple as saying, "Alexa, play Christmas music"). We also set up kitchen timers for holiday baking and got showtimes for local movies - plenty of functionality for a $30 device. 

The one (major) drawback to the Echo Dot is the total lack of a display.  You can't use this device to monitor a video doorbell or play YouTube videos like you can with Google Nest or even Amazon's own Echo Show, and it makes getting driving directions or setting multiple timers problematic. Sure, you can use your phone or tablet to compensate, but at that point, why have a smart home device at all?

Books: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

I joined a book club this year, and that means reading a lot of stuff that I never would otherwise. Case in point - The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers. It's a novel about several generations of an African-American family from a fictional small town in Georgia. Part Bildungsroman and part historical fiction, the book is miles away from the sci-fi and fantasy I usually read.

As a book club title, Love Songs is perhaps not ideal. It's 800 pages long, with fairly heavy subject matter. I expected the brutal ugliness of slavery and Jim Crow (the book follows a black family in Georgia, after all) but there is also a heaping helping of rape, substance abuse, and pedophilia, with all their associated family trauma. Jeffers's tale strikes a more hopeful tone at the end, but light beach reading, this ain't.

Love Songs is Jeffers's debut novel, but she's an English professor and a longtime poet with several published collections, so the writing is overall pretty good. The book could've used some editing, however. The narrative strikes me as disjointed; the book's best chapter - a 100-page descent into addiction that feels like watching a deep South Requiem for a Dream - could've been cut out entirely without any effect on the larger story.

Guns: S&W 642 Performance Center review - The Best Pocket Revolver in the World?

Introduction

I've been carrying Smith & Wesson J-frames for decades - mostly the double-action-only 642s, but also a 638 Bodyguard and a steel-frame Model 60.  They were all flawed, in one way or another: the 642s had atrocious trigger pulls, the 638's humpback hammer channel trapped pocket lint and dust, and the Model 60 was both too little (to handle .357 Magnum) and too big (to pocket carry). They also all had S&W's infamous internal key lock, which didn't impact reliability in any practical sense but certainly looked ugly.

So what would my ideal S&W 642 look like? Enter the 642 Performance Center:

Features

S&W's website provides a laundry list of features for the 642 Performance Center:

• Performance Center Tuned Action
• High Bright, Polished Cylinder Flutes
• High Bright, Polished Thumbpiece and Side Plate Screws
• Custom, Synthetic Grip with Wood Inserts
• Chrome-Plated, Polished Trigger
• Cylinder Cut for Full Moon Clips

Left out of S&W's list is the fact that the gun is based off the 642-1 frame, so it has no internal lock.

Of course, most of these features aren't terribly important. The polished cylinder, screws, and trigger add some bling but are useless apart from aesthetics. Having a cylinder cut for moon clips is nice, in that you can keep your initial cylinder of defense ammo clipped, theoretically making for easier ejection, but I don't believe in using moonclips for reloads in self-defense revolvers. Finally, the included rubber/wood grip is okay, but I slapped on a much lighter set of Hogue Bantams:

Sights and Trigger

There aren't any upgrades to the sights in the S&W 642 PC; it's the same dismal gray-on-gray you find in most of these guns.  I applied my usual treatment of Testors orange enamel model paint to the front ramp, which is almost essential for seeing it through the tiny notch rear sight.

The trigger, on the other hand, has been worked over nicely along with the rest of the action. In this 642, Smith has smoothed and lightened the J-frame trigger into something manageable, while not compromising on ignition reliability. Why can't all their guns come this way from the factory?

Range Report

For all the Performance Center refinement, this is still a snubnose revolver meant for daily carry, something to strap on for a quick trip to the grocery store. That means the 642 PC is tougher to shoot than a larger gun, due to its small grip, short sight radius and barrel, and heavier recoil. Here are some offhand groups from the gun over several years of testing:

Aguila 130 gr. FMJ - 10 rounds @ 10 yards

Remington UMC 158 gr. LRN - 10 rounds @ 10 yards

Remington HTP 158 gr. LSWCHP (the fabled "FBI Load") - 10 rounds @ 10 yards

Perfecta 158 gr. FMJ - 10 rounds @ 10 yards

Defensive Ammo POI comparison - Winchester 125 gr. SJHP vs. Hornady Critical Defense 110 gr. JHP @ 10 yards

...and compared to Winchester 125 gr. SJHP +P 

Magtech 158 gr. FMJ - 10 rounds @ 10 yards

My current "go-to" load for the gun is Federal's HST Micro +P, sort of a cross between a flat-nosed wadcutter and a hollowpoint round. It's one of the most consistent performers in terms of terminal ballistics, although the bullet profile makes it less accurate at range and unwieldy to load under stress (i.e., don't use this in your speedloaders):

Conclusion

The small revolver market is more competitive than it's ever been. There are very good options from Ruger, Kimber, and Colt that simply didn't exist 20 years ago. But to me, the 642 is still the best overall option, and the 642 Performance Center is the best 642.

Books: The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances

It's taken almost a year, but I'm finally ready for the Palm Beaches Half Marathon next weekend. Before I started training regularly, my longest run was a shade over three miles; now my Sunday long runs top 11 miles. That means I have just enough stamina to tackle the 13.1 mile circuit, which runs on Flagler Drive from Manatee Lagoon down to Washington Road.

My minor infatuation with running is nothing compared to cartoonist Matthew Inman, who explains his running obsession in the book The Terrible and Wonderful Reasons Why I Run Long Distances:

Most of the material comes from the multi-part webcomic of the same name. In both, Inman describes how he does not run for health or vanity, but to quiet the terrible noise of life on Earth (I find that my long runs do the same thing for me, to a point). Inman is a fairly serious runner (he's completed ultra marathons), but the book still comes at running from a funny, grape soda-filled perspective. It's a great gift idea for someone taking up running as part of a New Year's resolution.