Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Has anyone been paying attention to Iceland?
Actually, I have a better question: Why can't we do this here?
Monday, August 29, 2011
So, we survived.
As everyone else is saying, this hurricane wasn't as bad as we were expecting. Chris and I were pretty much prepared for whatever it could toss our way, but we were really hoping we didn't lose power. Sadly, we did, and we've hit Hour 32 of no 'lectric to the house.
The worst part, though, isn't that we lost power. It's that my block is the only block in the neighborhood to lose power, and it's all because the city sucks horribly when it comes to maintaining trees in the easement behind us. Last year, after over 10 years of letters and phone calls from Chris and other neighbors, they finally came out to trim the trees. They left a limb hanging on the lines, and we're pretty sure that played a part in killing power to the block. I'm told there are tree people in the neighborhood (currently lounging on the side of their truck, if twitter photos are any indication), so hopefully power will be restored sometime today.
My fish will be happy. So will I - I have lots of baking to do.
DISCLAIMER: yes, I know, we should have had a generator. We'll be rectifying that soon.
The worst part, though, isn't that we lost power. It's that my block is the only block in the neighborhood to lose power, and it's all because the city sucks horribly when it comes to maintaining trees in the easement behind us. Last year, after over 10 years of letters and phone calls from Chris and other neighbors, they finally came out to trim the trees. They left a limb hanging on the lines, and we're pretty sure that played a part in killing power to the block. I'm told there are tree people in the neighborhood (currently lounging on the side of their truck, if twitter photos are any indication), so hopefully power will be restored sometime today.
My fish will be happy. So will I - I have lots of baking to do.
DISCLAIMER: yes, I know, we should have had a generator. We'll be rectifying that soon.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
I hate living on the east coast.
I'm supposed to be driving to New Jersey for a friend's wedding reception right now, but instead Irene decided to rain on my parade. The winds aren't what's keeping me home...it's the fear of getting lost and stranded somewhere in NJ, and I'm really not down for that.
So I'm home, and being home allowed me to help get the house ready for the Smackening (and potential crazy power outages to follow).
I got gas on Thursday, and was absolutely amazed at the amount of people at Costco. The place was so packed they were spilling over into other parking lots just to park their cars. I heard they still had water as of yesterday morning, but I'm sure their shelves are now bare. The milk, eggs, bread, and TP are surely gone, as well. People have to make their TP casseroles, you know.
It made me wonder...just how few people actually know how to handle extreme weather in this stupid state? I'm somewhat used to the panic from a potential snowfall, but we really don't deal with hurricanes all that often so the idiots are even more frenzied than they would be in the winter.
Anyway. Those of you in the path of this thing, stay safe.
So I'm home, and being home allowed me to help get the house ready for the Smackening (and potential crazy power outages to follow).
I got gas on Thursday, and was absolutely amazed at the amount of people at Costco. The place was so packed they were spilling over into other parking lots just to park their cars. I heard they still had water as of yesterday morning, but I'm sure their shelves are now bare. The milk, eggs, bread, and TP are surely gone, as well. People have to make their TP casseroles, you know.
It made me wonder...just how few people actually know how to handle extreme weather in this stupid state? I'm somewhat used to the panic from a potential snowfall, but we really don't deal with hurricanes all that often so the idiots are even more frenzied than they would be in the winter.
Anyway. Those of you in the path of this thing, stay safe.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
What happened to customer service?
I started looking at some polymer 9mm pistols and one of the pistols I was interested in was the Walther P99. I checked out Walther USA's website and there wasn't much information on different models or accessories. You see I'm a lefty and although I have seen and fired Walther p99 pistols with right side slide locks and safeties I did not see any reference to them on the website or in the product catalog. For those of you that don't know Smith & Wesson distributes Walther pistols in the US. The pistols are still made in Germany they're just imported and sold through S&W. I did find exactly what I wanted on the Walther Germany website and so after checking various boards and sites on the web with no luck on model numbers I decided to email customer service an ask. I sent
"Hi,
After looking at the website and current catalog I am still having difficulty finding the correct model of one of your handguns. I am interested in the Walther P99 AS 9mm shown here
http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=13152&storeId=10002&productId=58947&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=43803&isFirearm=Y
I have heard of, and seen pictures of this handgun with an extended, right side, ambidextrous slide stop and long magazine release for lefties but I cannot locate the model on the website or the catalog. I do see the model listed on the German Walther site here:
http://www.carl-walther.de/index.php?company=walther&lang=EN&content=products&hid=2&uid=1&product=860
It shows additional codes for various features
PS = steel sights with phosphor 3-dot
AM = elongated ambidextrous slide stop
LM = long magazine release
Is a pistol so equipped available, and if so what would the model number be that I would tell my gun shop to order?
Thanks,
After about a week I received this reply.
Hello,
the models you saw are only available in Europe and are not available in the states. Thank You
While it directly answers my question, he doesn't go any further at all. Not, but we have this model, or this kit is available for it, or anything. Just NOPE, sorry. I do believe Walther has a pretty recently released similar pistol that even has ambidextrous controls on it. I don't think that's asking too much to expand on an answer or make an alternative suggestion. I guess this might be a partial explanation why you don't see a lot of Walther sales. It even makes me wary of buying a S&W now.
"Hi,
After looking at the website and current catalog I am still having difficulty finding the correct model of one of your handguns. I am interested in the Walther P99 AS 9mm shown here
http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=13152&storeId=10002&productId=58947&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=43803&isFirearm=Y
I have heard of, and seen pictures of this handgun with an extended, right side, ambidextrous slide stop and long magazine release for lefties but I cannot locate the model on the website or the catalog. I do see the model listed on the German Walther site here:
http://www.carl-walther.de/index.php?company=walther&lang=EN&content=products&hid=2&uid=1&product=860
It shows additional codes for various features
PS = steel sights with phosphor 3-dot
AM = elongated ambidextrous slide stop
LM = long magazine release
Is a pistol so equipped available, and if so what would the model number be that I would tell my gun shop to order?
Thanks,
After about a week I received this reply.
Hello,
the models you saw are only available in Europe and are not available in the states. Thank You
While it directly answers my question, he doesn't go any further at all. Not, but we have this model, or this kit is available for it, or anything. Just NOPE, sorry. I do believe Walther has a pretty recently released similar pistol that even has ambidextrous controls on it. I don't think that's asking too much to expand on an answer or make an alternative suggestion. I guess this might be a partial explanation why you don't see a lot of Walther sales. It even makes me wary of buying a S&W now.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Even Woot is selling gun stuff?
This was a pleasant surprise this morning. Apparently even a immensely popular site like woot.com is now selling occasional gun-related items.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Our ARs finally work!
Or: Why I can't recommend Del-Ton to anyone.
To recap -
I ordered two AR15 uppers from Del-Ton on 1/31/09. This date is important, so keep it in mind.
Between February and the end of November, I made the following posts about it:
Sigh, backorders
Great googly moogly!
Yet another Del-Ton delay
Good news, better news, and bad news
Good news, everyone!
Chris's upper showed up in September, and mine showed up the first week of December of that year. I neglected to post about the upper showing up due to my grandfather's passing, but it did show up that first week in December. By the time mine showed up I was just thrilled to see anything. So: Ordered everything at the end of January, and the second upper showed up almost a YEAR later. In that time, I received absolutely no information from Del-Ton - I had to waste my time and call THEM to get the same answer over and over and over. I don't care how busy a company is, a form email does NOT take much time to write and send out to customers. Thanks to the beauty of technology, said email could have been drafted while someone dropped the kids off at the pool. Anyway, moving on...
We did not get any opportunity to test either upper until 7/4/10, and on that range trip both rifles had consistent issues. I posted about the problems we had here. We did not get another chance to really test anything until last month, when Chris's friend helped him diagnose the problem. After swapping bolts, uppers, lowers, and magazines they were able to determine there was an issue with the gas system in both uppers. Please note, I was quite angry...I expected better of Del-Ton. I suppose I should have used the lack of communication from them as a sign regarding their build quality.
By now, it's well past any warranty would be in effect, so this weekend we took the uppers to Dan over at Gun Connection. Dan was able to diagnose and repair both uppers while we waited. What he found, though, was a bit distressing...both because Del-Ton sent defective parts and because neither Chris nor I knew what we were doing with these rifles. I spent much of Saturday fuming at Del-Ton's shoddy build quality and my own stupidity, and I have since learned my lesson.
So, the problems: On Chris's upper, the gas block was so screwed up there's no way he'd actually get anything to cycle properly. If you take a close look at the photo, you'll see where the hole inside it was poorly drilled...it almost looks like the person who worked on the part used a small explosive to get that hole in there.
That's pretty freaking bad. It also wasn't on properly, as we could jiggle it without loosening anything. No wonder there was an issue with the gas system!
Dan replaced the gas block with one from Daniel Defense and put everything back together. On my upper, the gas tube was off by about 15 degrees and it was clogged (user error - it wasn't properly cleaned before we took it out the first time). He reseated everything and did a particularly thorough cleaning for me. A little over a hundred dollars in parts and labor later and we left with two functioning rifles, though we were charged with testing both over the weekend to make sure everything worked.
Yesterday, during a break in the nasty weather, we took them out...and they worked beautifully. Chris had some difficulty with his optic, but that's user error and will be rectified once he reacquaints himself with the instructions. I, on the other hand, landed almost every shot where I wanted it once I figured out how to use my scope. Overall, I'm glad this ordeal is over, and I'm especially glad we now have two functioning rifles that are quite a bit of fun to shoot.
To sum up:
boo Del-Ton
yay Gun Connection
thoroughly educate yourself about a firearm if it's known to be finicky
thoroughly educate yourself on a retailer before spending a significant amount of money.
The final result of two mags through my rifle (while also learning the particulars of my optics - the low shots were the first few i took, and i aimed for each box at least once to see how well i could do):
...Yeah. I'm happy now.
To recap -
I ordered two AR15 uppers from Del-Ton on 1/31/09. This date is important, so keep it in mind.
Between February and the end of November, I made the following posts about it:
Sigh, backorders
Great googly moogly!
Yet another Del-Ton delay
Good news, better news, and bad news
Good news, everyone!
Chris's upper showed up in September, and mine showed up the first week of December of that year. I neglected to post about the upper showing up due to my grandfather's passing, but it did show up that first week in December. By the time mine showed up I was just thrilled to see anything. So: Ordered everything at the end of January, and the second upper showed up almost a YEAR later. In that time, I received absolutely no information from Del-Ton - I had to waste my time and call THEM to get the same answer over and over and over. I don't care how busy a company is, a form email does NOT take much time to write and send out to customers. Thanks to the beauty of technology, said email could have been drafted while someone dropped the kids off at the pool. Anyway, moving on...
We did not get any opportunity to test either upper until 7/4/10, and on that range trip both rifles had consistent issues. I posted about the problems we had here. We did not get another chance to really test anything until last month, when Chris's friend helped him diagnose the problem. After swapping bolts, uppers, lowers, and magazines they were able to determine there was an issue with the gas system in both uppers. Please note, I was quite angry...I expected better of Del-Ton. I suppose I should have used the lack of communication from them as a sign regarding their build quality.
By now, it's well past any warranty would be in effect, so this weekend we took the uppers to Dan over at Gun Connection. Dan was able to diagnose and repair both uppers while we waited. What he found, though, was a bit distressing...both because Del-Ton sent defective parts and because neither Chris nor I knew what we were doing with these rifles. I spent much of Saturday fuming at Del-Ton's shoddy build quality and my own stupidity, and I have since learned my lesson.
So, the problems: On Chris's upper, the gas block was so screwed up there's no way he'd actually get anything to cycle properly. If you take a close look at the photo, you'll see where the hole inside it was poorly drilled...it almost looks like the person who worked on the part used a small explosive to get that hole in there.
That's pretty freaking bad. It also wasn't on properly, as we could jiggle it without loosening anything. No wonder there was an issue with the gas system!
Dan replaced the gas block with one from Daniel Defense and put everything back together. On my upper, the gas tube was off by about 15 degrees and it was clogged (user error - it wasn't properly cleaned before we took it out the first time). He reseated everything and did a particularly thorough cleaning for me. A little over a hundred dollars in parts and labor later and we left with two functioning rifles, though we were charged with testing both over the weekend to make sure everything worked.
Yesterday, during a break in the nasty weather, we took them out...and they worked beautifully. Chris had some difficulty with his optic, but that's user error and will be rectified once he reacquaints himself with the instructions. I, on the other hand, landed almost every shot where I wanted it once I figured out how to use my scope. Overall, I'm glad this ordeal is over, and I'm especially glad we now have two functioning rifles that are quite a bit of fun to shoot.
To sum up:
boo Del-Ton
yay Gun Connection
thoroughly educate yourself about a firearm if it's known to be finicky
thoroughly educate yourself on a retailer before spending a significant amount of money.
The final result of two mags through my rifle (while also learning the particulars of my optics - the low shots were the first few i took, and i aimed for each box at least once to see how well i could do):
...Yeah. I'm happy now.
In other news...
Remember when this happened?
The officer who shot the marine in question was sentenced today. I don't think 5 years is enough.
The officer who shot the marine in question was sentenced today. I don't think 5 years is enough.
You know what makes me sick?
It isn't the fact that "flash mobs" are now organizing to steal things from stores. It's not even the fact that this is happening in Maryland.
No, it's the fact that the police don't care enough to investigate. How, exactly, do they think dismissing this incident is acceptable?
No, it's the fact that the police don't care enough to investigate. How, exactly, do they think dismissing this incident is acceptable?
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