2/21/14

I fucking hate technology.  The other evening, Tuesday I believe, I was watching TV when all of a sudden the lamp shut off.  I turned off the unit and tried again.  It ran for about five minutes and shut off again.  This was the same evening that the phone was out so you can imagine how close to breakage several things in the house came.  I went to bed instead.  Wednesday evening I tried the TV again.  It worked for a while and shut off again.  I gave up and ordered a lamp from e-Bay… then remembered the place in Not Texas who sells projector lamps.  Yesterday I took off for a few hours and drove over to Not Texas and bought a lamp.  When I got home I installed it and the picture never looked better.  It was like having a new TV.  It was friggin’ awesome… for about half an hour.  Suddenly a huge dark blob appeared off center of the screen and grew darker and larger as I watched.  Before long the image was just a fucking ring around the edge of the screen.  I was fucking pissed.  I reseated the lamp and tried it again only to see the same fucking blob.  Mom offered to take me to Sam’s to get a new TV once I ‘splained that this one appears to be terminal.  I declined because there was no way for us to get the old TV out if we had bought a new one.  I sent John a text asking if he were free so I could ask if he were available to meet me at Sam’s or Best Buy to help shift them.  After a while I decided I wouldn’t ask him and sent a “Never Mind” text.  I steamed in front of the dead mother fucker for about an hour while the cat tried to soothe my nerves.  Eventually I gave up and went to bed… at 2030 h.  This morning mom suggested that she would call my brother and see if he could come help move the things tomorrow morning if she and I were to go buy one this evening.  She called a little while ago to say he is coming to the house to do that tomorrow and that she and I will go shopping when I get home.  I'm so fucking pissed off that I'm about ready to say, “Fuck it!” and become a hipster who doesn’t have a TV.  Unfortunately, mom has it in her head that we need a TV in the living room so we’ll be replacing it after all.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the old mother fucker though.  I'm thinking I'll take it to a TV repair place and say, “If you will give me $150.00 for the brand new lamp with less than an hour on it, you may have the TV to repair and sell.”  I'm sure they won't go for it, but it will be worth a try.  If they don’t, it might fall out of the back of the truck on some back road.  If that back road is far enough from civilization, the son of a bitch might get a few shotgun blasts after it falls from the truck!  We’ll see.  Oh, I did manage to get a refund on the lamp from e-bay so I'm only out $175.00 rather than $350.00.  So, with plans afoot for tomorrow, I don’t think I'll be working on John's wiring harness after all.  I do need to take the 7.62x39 Saiga to the shop to remove a recalcitrant section of Picatinny rail riser at some point during the weekend.  I might do that Sunday.  See, I've been shifting optics around from gun to gun and I think I want to put the 3x scope which used to live on the SKS onto the 7.62x39 Saiga.  Right now it is on the 90/22, and looks totally badass, but that is more of a close-quarters gun than a medium range weapon.  It would do better with the heads-up optic I bought at the last show.  That optic is currently on the 7.62x39 Saiga and the Trijicon stuff is on the SKS.  I'd put the scope back on the SKS but it doesn’t work as well on there as a heads-up optic because it interferes with loading when the scope is far enough back to be close enough to the eye.  Sort of thing.  On the 7.62x39 Saiga I don’t have that problem.  Besides, since the SKS's barrel has been shortened to just a hair longer than the 7.62x39 Saiga’s, I doubt the difference in accuracy between the two is going to be all that great.  The weight difference is negligible so humping one around rather than the other will be equally uncomfortable by the end of the day… once the fit has hit the shan and we’ve descended into anarchy.  Sort of thing.  Well, it is now 1125 h so I guess I'm going to go have some lunch with Larry.  I'll probably have something to say on Monday… but if it does all get to me and I decide to say “Fuck it, I'm out of here,” I'm sure Spiderman will let y'all know what’s what.