11/13/12

Ok, when we left off yesterday I mentioned going to Whiskey Flatts to shoot Mentok.  I must admit that I am not the crack shot I a) used to be and 2) wish I still was.  I know, practice is everything.  I don’t get enough shoosting time these days.  I was within a few inches of my aim point at seven yards, my “I think I can justify that shooting to the district attorney” practice range.  Any further than that and Juan could argue I wasn’t in THAT much imminent peril.  Anyhoo, my assessment of the 6” barrel Judge is that it is as accurate as I am.  .410 buckshot seems to spread a little less than it did with the 3” barrel and .45 Colt seems to be as accurate as… well, it is as accurate as I am, that’s about all I can say about it.  It did seem as though the Winchester Silver Tip, “Werewolf” ammo, was a tad more accurate than the Texas Wheeler reloaded stuff… but not by a whole lot.  Oh, and it seemed to kick less which goes against everything my mind was telling me it otter do.  My thinking was the longer barrel would give more time for the expanding gasses to push on the bullet thereby imparting a higher muzzle velocity and thus higher felt recoil.  For some reason, it didn’t.  I can't ‘splain it.  I also don’t understand why spending more time in rifling, imparting theoretically more spin, would make the buckshot pattern TIGHTER… but it did that as well.  It is a conundrum.  After popping off fifteen buckshot shells and about twenty five .45 Colt rounds, I packed up and called it a day.  At the house I ran a bore snake through the barrel and chambers and wiped the gun down real good the declared it “Clean enough.”  I loaded five buckshot shells and put it in the holster on my bed frame.  I updated the ammo inventory in the computer and goofed off the rest of the day.  Now, the reason I took Fifi to the shop and brought the trailer home was Jeff, the Toyota dude, wanted me to help him move his Corrolla from his house in Lake Worth to his shop in Sanger on Sunday.  Sunday morning I headed his direction at about 0745 h.  I got there and waited for him to arrive.  When he did we had a look at the car.  Of course it was sitting on four flat tires… 205s on the front and probably 215s on the rear.  Yeah, this was going to be a bitch to roll.  We couldn’t get it to budge.  He hooked up a chain to his truck and drug it out to the street where we managed to almost get it to turn towards the trailer.  We finally “gave up” and went to Beenbroke to get the come-along.  We drug the Corrolla in front of his driveway and hopped in Fifi.  Half an hour later we were at my shop.  I showed him all our projects and grabbed the come-along.  We headed back.  Another half an hour later and we were ready to drag the car onto the trailer.  It went pretty easily, actually.  We tied it down and headed to a car wash where he sprayed ten years’ worth of dust and dirt off of the thing.  It did look a lot better.  We then headed north to Sanger.  At the shop portion of the storage place, I backed up to the door and Jeff aired up the tires.  I never would have believed they would hold air… but they did.  We rolled it halfway off the trailer and were in a dangerous position pointed at the wall of the shop.  It was decided that I'd drag the trailer out from under the car’s nose.  I did and smelled clutch like crazy.  Oh, it also started raining about that time.  We tried to shove the car into the bay but it would not roll, even on aired-up tires.  Jeff pulled the nose of his truck up to the nose of the Corrolla and shoved it on in while I steered.  With that job done, we parted company and I headed home.  Now, when I told mom I was going to Sanger, she told me about a date she went on in college, before meeting dad.  The guy had a car and asked if she wanted to go for a drive.  They wound up in Sanger, which is just about twenty miles north of Denton where mom was going to school.  She said that the only reason she even remembers the date was that the guy bought her a box of genuine Kleenex tissues, a luxury she hadn’t seen since before WWII.  I stopped at an inconvenience store before leaving town and bought a diet Mountain Dew, two Jack Link’s Beef Sticks (think Slim Jims, but made by Jack Link’s), a Giant Size Reese’s Peanut Butter cup, and a package of Kleenex.  I ate the beef sticks and Reese’s, drank the diet Dew, and called it lunch.  I dropped the trailer at the shop and went home.  I gave mom the Kleenex and a receipt showing they were bought in Sanger and she laughed.  I'm sure she’ll tell the tale many times in the near future.  Oh wait!  I didn’t go home from dropping off the trailer.  I stopped at Best Buy and bought a laptop “on the way” home.  I walked in and asked the greeter lady if I could buy something on my Best Buy card if I didn’t have it with me.  She said I could.  I went to the computer area and was met by a little cutie patootie sales girl.  I ‘splained what I “needed” in a laptop: cheap-ishness, intergooglewebs, Word, Excel… that sort of stuff.  She started showing them to me.  I said, “The last ‘top was a Toshiba, I'd like to stick with that so I have spare power thingies.”  She showed me the laptop I wound up buying.  She offered to let me play with it for a while… if you know what I mean!  Wait, no.  I wish.  No, she asked if I wanted to mess with Windows 8 on it for a bit but I said I'd just take it.  Yeah, I'm a dumbass.  She was apparently new and had to get one of the hairy-legged boys to ring me out.  He sold me the Office suite of software so I'd have Word and Excel, along with the Nerd Herd protection plan.  $900.00 later, I was texting John that bit about not having unboxed it yet but that I was sure I was going to hate W8.  At home I spent a couple hours fingering out the wireless router and my e-mail passwords then started to try and use the thing.  Worst.  Operating system.  Ever.  I'm debating whether or not I'm going to say, “Windows 8 sucks worse than Vista” 550 times right now.  Hmm, probably not today.  I finally got so pissed off with the damned thing that I shut it down, boxed it up, and took it right back to the store.  I walked in and the same greeter lady smiled was there.  I said to her, “I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate this laptop.”  She just hiked her finger over her shoulder and said, “Customer service.”  They didn’t question me or try to talk me into keeping it, they just refunded my money.  Apparently they are getting these back more often than they are being kept… I'm guessing.  I had brought the old laptop with me to see if Nerd Herd could replace the screen… they could not.  I went back to the computer area to “Yell at” the cutie patootie for selling me such a monumental shit pile.  I wasn’t really going to yell at her, and I didn’t.  I told her about how awful W8 is and how I just returned the thing.  I apologized if I screwed up her commission and was told they don’t sell on commission.  I was relieved about that.  It was then that I bought the monitor and KVM switch for the old laptop, a tale I believe I told yesterday.  So, now that I have y'all caught up on my weekend, I think I'll call it a rant.  I'll tell y'all about the VG plans, and why they are coming back around again, tomorrow.