Miscellany: Microtech Combat Troodon Gen III review

Like many knife companies, Microtech constantly updates its product lineup, and in recent years it has introduced "Gen III" versions of its flagship automatic, the Combat Troodon:

The upgrades to the Gen III Combat Troodon from the older model are major, so much so that it is essentially a brand-new knife.  The new "dual fuel drivetrain" makes the blade much easier to fire and retract, yet the action is no less safe (the button still requires about an inch of travel). The sides of the handle are smoother, and the pocket clip has a ceramic ball, so the knife is easier to draw from the pocket.  Finally, the glass breaker at the end of the knife is radically smaller and shorter, which I think is appropriate for a feature that 99% of people will never use.

Downsides? Well, this is (still) a spendy knife (street prices in the high $400s for most variants), so it's out of reach for a lot of people. It's also (still) relatively large, heavy, and intimidating for an EDC piece - I would not whip this out in the middle of a library to cut a loose thread. All that being said, I think the Gen III positives vastly outweigh the negatives, so if you're in the market for an American-made automatic, it's a strong option.

Guns: D-Dey Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) class notes

I'm not sure if D-Dey Response Group is still offering Tactical Combat Casualty Care (or if they are even still offering classes in Florida, period), but I definitely learned a lot when I took TCCC in August 2022 with instructor Dan Hudnet.

Day 1 consisted of lecture and demos at D-Dey's indoor facility in Stuart, FL, and Day 2 featured live-fire shooting and simulated casualty care at OK Corral Gun Club.

DAY 1 NOTES

First Care Under Fire

• Can they walk? Have them apply stopgap treatment on themselves
• Don't get shot applying care to someone else - may only be able to apply critical items like a tourniquet (TQ)

Then Tactical Field Care (not actively under fire)

Then Tactical Evac Care (get to higher level of care)

MARCH algorithm - Massive bleeding, Airway, Respiratory, Circulation, Head/Hypothermia

Massive Bleeding

Old protocol was to put fluids (IV) into people - that has changed

Video example

Traffic stop where a cop is shot and his partner applies TQ to his arm

Takeaways

• Use cover! often the casualty can get up and relocate.
• Neutralize the threat first

TQ comparison

CAT is good, but needs 5" minimum limb

SOF-T is good, but less convenient for self-application

Other (worse) options: RATs, SWAT-T, improvised

1) Stopgap - apply direct pressure however you can

2) Apply TQ "high and tight"

Video example

officer shoots suspect, applies TQ to suspect's leg

Video example

hotel lobby - victim bleeding out

Self-application practice drill on arms and legs

CAT Tip - Trace the velcro all the way around - if it fails, the TQ needs to be reapplied

Internal bleeding can swell the appendage

Watch for both entrance and exit wounds

Junctional Bleeding / Woundpacking tips

Celox Rapid Z fold gauze

1) Start the "powerball" - a wad of gauze - helps protect your hands from sharp bones

2) Pack the wound - "Which way is the blood flowing?" - Got to kill the source

3) MAINTAIN PRESSURE

ETB - use the clips - do not trust the velcro

Airways

• head tilt, jaw thrust
• NPA - be sure to lubricate
• If you hear snoring, etc., don't force it
• If resistance is met, use a back and forth motion - rotate/saw
• To size airway - measure from nostrils to the bottom of jawline/earlobes
• DO NOT USE IF they're bleeding from back of the head, or if there's facial trauma
• Lube can dry out - can use spit or blood to lube
• Just need to lube the tip
• Apply beveled edge to septum
• Work it in little by little
• No force
• Make sure curve is the right way
• If you do one side, might as well do two

Recovery Position

• Only if you have to leave someone
• Turn patient to their left side

Respiration (the "box")

• Chest seal- pull half off - do not let it stick to itself

Video Example - Afghanistan SF soldier shot - chest seal applied to back

Circulation

• Shock is from inadequate blood to the body
• leads to altered mental state
• alertness/attentiveness down
• body will compensate for a little while...until it doesn't

Head injury/Hypothermia

• Head injury is beyond the scope of the course - even fire rescue can't do much
• Passive warming/thermal blanket
• Active warming/ready heat
• Hypothermia directly affects clotting ability

For bowel hit - wet pack with abdominal bandage - do not use Celox

Trach demo

Burns/splints/bandage demo

Burns

• liquid - hose it off
• dry - wipe off as much as possible (water might make it worse)
• Irrigate
• Burntec dressing
• Burn is gonna be wet and oozing

Impaled objects - leave in unless airway affected

DAY 2 NOTES

My Equipment - P365 in PHLster Skeleton with single mag pouch and LTC TQ holder

Safety briefing

Pork butt demo

- Tiny exit wound from ball ammo (entrance would may be small and not bleeding much)

- JHP - bigger hole

- bone hit - fragments

- 5.56 entrance holes are tiny, but the round causes huge damage

- 00 buck and slugs - catastrophic damage

Shooting - 2-shot warmup plus TQ

2 shots -> TQ -> 2 shots

1 handed manipulations

- Still push into it

- Arms first

- can use shoe to rack

Shooting from back

- TQs on legs

- now being interrupted

- Keep eyes downrange as much as possible

Drag the body drill

- Use the "groucho walk"

- Cover + TQ + body drag

Team drill (pairs)

- simple commands

- watch for exit wounds

- wounds are not always "front and back"

A Way-Too-Early Halloween at Shangrila Towers, Part 4 - Halloween Horror Nights 35

Spooky Season seems to come around sooner and sooner each year, and I am leaning into the madness with a series of Halloween-themed blog posts well in advance of the big night. Let's cap this early celebration of All Hallows' Eve off with a September trip to Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights:

I heard good things about HHN this year, so the guys and I schlepped off to Universal Studios Orlando for another trek into the night:

There wasn't much of an overarching theme for HHN 35, but there were some houses that are unlikely to ever be repeated. Ozzy Osbourne: Prince of Darkness is a tribute to the late rocker filled with scenes inspired by his songs (yes, there is a "crazy train") - if any HHN house could be called "touching," this one would be it.  Other probable one-offs include Sinners, based on Ryan Coogler's hit 2025 movie, and Evil Dead Burn, which began development before the movie even started filming, thanks to some help from Warner Bros.  My favorite of the night was actually the Hellraiser house, which did a fine job of realizing Clive Barker's nightmarish vision.

Aside from the houses, this year's live show (Nightmare Fuel: Blood Noir) was pretty good, with more plot than usual and fewer momentum-killing interludes for vaudeville illusions (there was still a sword swallower, though). The scarezones were largely misses, sadly - while I liked the Killer Klowns from Outer Space elements in Downtown Clowntown, let's hope the hamhanded attempt to appeal to the young'uns with Fornitemares is not the start of a trend. 

As usual, we finished the evening with a quick trip to the merch store, and so ended another Halloween Horror Nights...

A Way-Too-Early Halloween at Shangrila Towers, Part 3 - Incidents Around the House

Spooky Season seems to come around sooner and sooner each year, and I am leaning into the madness with a series of Halloween-themed blog posts well in advance of the big night. Today, let's look at a horror novel by Josh Malerman, author of Bird Box:

Malerman gives himself a very tough assignment in Incidents Around the House: the entire story is told from the first-person perspective of an 8-year old girl named Bela, as she and her family are haunted by a mysterious entity. Malerman's perspective experiment has problems (Bela's voice sometimes feels younger or older than she is, and her parents inexplicably start monologuing to her whenever they think she is asleep), but it's certainly the most clever thing about the book, which is otherwise a prototypical haunted house/boogeyman tale. 

There are some great jump scares, and Michigan is always a creepy place to be followed by a supernatural entity, but the book is about 100 pages too long.  By the third or fourth time Bela's family flees to a place of seeming safety, only to be scared away by some horrible incident, you'll start hoping the entity just finishes the job so you can read something else. I hope that the upcoming film adaptation Other Mommy cuts some of the narrative fat out.

A Way-Too-Early Halloween at Shangrila Towers, Part 2 - Hellraiser Trilogy retrospective

Spooky Season seems to come around sooner and sooner each year, and I am leaning into the madness with a series of Halloween-themed blog posts well in advance of the big night. 

In the run-up to Halloween Horror Nights, I decided to bone up on the media that the HHN houses were based on: I listened to some Ozzy Osbourne, watched Evil Dead Burn, and rewatched the first three Hellraiser movies (sorta - the third one wasn't readily available and isn't very good, see below)...

Hellraiser

Hellraiser's creator, Clive Barker, is one of the greatest horror writers of all time, and he also did a fine job directing the first entry in the long-running series:

Coming in at a lean 93 minutes, Hellraiser is the most focused and grounded of the movies. The plot centers around the Cotton family, including the perverted Frank, his wicked sister-in-law/lover Julia, and the final girl, Kirsty. While the film has a pretty loose plot, its visual design, especially that of the Cenobites, holds up well - even in a sea of '80s slasher villains, the iconic Hell Priest (a/k/a "Pinhead," a nickname Barker hates) stands out, although the real monsters of the story are the black-hearted human antagonists.

Rating: 8/10

Hellbound: Hellraiser II

The first sequel, and the last "good" Hellraiser movie, has a lot of similarities with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: a mental hospital setting, expanded lore, and a new deuteragonist that the original final girl assists.

The plot (never a strong point in the Hellraiser series) gets even messier here.  The second half of the movie sees the characters wander a dreamlike maze featuring all manner of barely connected vignettes, including a brief battle between the Cenobites and the true villain of the movie. The oddity wears a little thin after awhile, but if you want strange, unforgettable images, Hellrasier II delivers.

Rating: 7/10

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

This is the first of the movies filmed outside the UK, and it waters down the concept into something almost unrecognizable. I guess the mandate was to turn Pinhead into the next Jason or Freddy, because in this one, he starts to murder people indiscriminately.  Combine that with more comic creature design (the infamous CD Cenobite) and you have the beginning of a long, slow decline in quality.

Rating: 5/10

A Way-Too-Early Halloween at Shangrila Towers, Part 1 - Resident Evil (2026)

Spooky Season seems to come around sooner and sooner each year, and I am leaning into the madness with a series of Halloween-themed blog posts well in advance of the big night.  Today's entry is a review of Resident Evil, a high-profile horror movie that would normally release in October, but instead just released in theaters last weekend.

Zach Cregger's take on "Resident Evil" was controversial from the start.  When word got out that the film wouldn't use any of the characters or storylines from the long-running video game series, fans were rightfully skeptical of the whole project.  Was this just a Zach Cregger zombie movie with the "Resident Evil" name slapped on?

In some ways, the answer is no - Cregger's Resident Evil is perhaps the most faithful adaptation of the series ever, at least in terms of conveying what it's like to play a survival horror game.  The protagonist is a hapless everyman thrust into one gory predicament after another, and he struggles with all of the tropes of the series: limited ammunition, enemies that frustratingly won't stay down, and even a final act that takes place in a bioweapons lab and features a giant mutated monster.  It's a well-made, slick piece of entertainment that moves along briskly and features the gruesome creature design the series is known for.

It's a shame, then, that Resident Evil so often undermines its horror with humor.  I saw this same thing happen in Cregger's other big films, Barbarian and Weapons, and I was hoping he could tone it down given that he's adapting the OG horror videogame.  Comparing this to Resident Evil Requiem is like comparing an SNL parody to the real thing.

Rating: 6/10

Books: Gut

 

In Gut, Dr. Giulia Enders takes the reader on a whimsical tour of the human digestive system, all the way from stem to (ahem) stern. The original German title of the book was Darm mit Charme ("Charming Bowles"), and "charming" is a fitting adjective for the childlike fascination Dr. Enders brings to parts of the body that are usually unmentionable in polite conversation. Combine the playful prose with cartoonish illustrations by Dr. Enders's sister, and even gross topics like fecal transplants and gut microbiota become fun. 

You can get a sense of what the book covers from this TED talk Dr. Enders delivered back in 2017:

Music: Let's Roll

I know I said I love you, I know you know it's true

I've got to put the phone down and do what we got to do

One's standing in the aisleway, two more at the door

We've got to get inside there before they kill some more

Time is running out

Let's roll

Time is running out

Let's roll

Music: "Let It Be" (feat. Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr)

Dolly Parton's death last week fittingly set off a wave of memorials and tributes, but while she was world famous for her outsized personal style and Appalachian philanthropy, her musical talent remains her greatest legacy.  Dolly's stellar songwriting and bright warbling soprano meant that in her decades-long career, it seemed like every musician in America worked with her at one point or another.

Dolly's last full-length studio album, "Rockstar," featured collaborations with some great musicians, including Sting, Peter Frampton, Elton John, and the surviving two members of the Beatles for her wistful cover of "Let It Be":

Guns: S&W K-22 Masterpiece review

Introduction

There are some guns that you hope to pass on to your heirs, and Smith & Wesson's K-22 Masterpiece is certainly one of them.  This fine .22 LR revolver was first introduced during the Great Depression as a target and hunting piece (S&W called it the "Outdoorsman").  Both demand and production ramped up after WWII, and my example came from the early post-war era, around 1947.  How can you tell? Well, the gun doesn't have the old pencil barrel or blended rear sight, but it does have a "five-screw" frame (with screws in the top of the sideplate and the front of the trigger guard).  

At the time it came out, the K-22 Masterpiece was considered the best production .22 revolver in the world. But how does the 80-year-old K-22 stack up against modern guns? Let's find out.

Sights, Action, and Grips

As with most firearms back then, the K-22 Masterpiece came with simple black patridge sights, with a square pinned front sight and an adjustable rear sight.  They're pretty small (again, very common for a gun from the 1940s), but they are precise, and it's easy to get a clean sight picture.

After several previous owners and probably thousands of rounds, the blued finish on my gun is worn but the serrated double-action trigger is smooth, with a crisp and light single-action pull - maybe around 2 or 3 pounds.

My K-22 looks like it wears the original Circassian diamond magna grips with a target style square butt.  The grips provide a surprising amount of traction given how old and worn they are, and the gun remained very stable in hand in both double and single action fire.

Range Report

The K-22 is probably the best handgun around for training people who have never held a gun before. It's very easy to load and unload, and when shot in single-action, the light trigger makes getting good hits easy.  The full-size steel frame is a little heavy for smaller people, but it also makes .22 cartridges recoil like an air gun. Overall, the gun is so pleasant that I taught Mom to shoot with it about ten years ago:

Is the K-22 quite as accurate as modern semiautomatic handguns? Perhaps not, but it's accurate enough for my purposes.

12 rounds of Federal AutoMatch (the cheap stuff) at 20 yards:

18 rounds of Federal HV Match at 20 yards:

24 rounds of Winchester 222 bulk pack (40 gr.) at 20 yards: 

12 rounds of Remington Golden Bullet at 15 yards:

Functionally, the gun worked great, except for a few failures to fire (light strikes) when shooting in double action.  I attribute these occasional malfunctions to the 80-year old lockwork (I have no idea if the springs have ever been replaced).  Since I don't plan on using this gun for self-defense anytime soon, it's not that big a deal.

Conclusion

If you're tired of the quality control issues with the revolvers put out by Smith & Wesson (and every other manufacturer) nowadays, the K-22 Masterpiece is for you.  It hails from a time when it was commercially feasible to sell a full-size all-steel .22 revolver that required large amounts of hand fitting and polishing.  Those days may be gone now, but at least the guns remain...