I think itÂ’s time for me to retire from the game. I finally broke my previous high score of 36,001. Now I reached 147,933 points.

If I spend anymore time obsessing over this stupid game, I think my wife might leave me.

UPDATE: Okay, I lied and tried it one more time. This is an actual screen shot, the numbers on it were not altered.

Posted by: Contagion at 02:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I had to go to work this morning. A couple of my peers are leaving and IÂ’m picking up the slack so that things run smoothly. In doing so I fell behind in some of my work. We also had mandatory OT for our people today due to the high volumes of inventory we have that needs to get out. Since my people were working and I was going in, I decided to follow a long-standing tradition.

I wear a kilt to work on Mandatory Saturdays.

Folks, this seemed like a good idea yesterday, but this morning I kind of regretted making it. First off, scraping the windows of my truck wearing a kilt in negative 2 degree weather is NOT fun in any shape or form. It gets hard breathing around my daddy berries. The cold hit the good time boys and they just retracted all the way up to my throat. Secondly, climbing in to my truck while wearing a kilt and not exposing yourself to the world takes some skill. When itÂ’s cold like this, it takes even more. Finally, climbing out of the truck is pretty easy, but that snowy blast on Mr. Happy was enough to make tears well up in my eyes.

Next time IÂ’m going to think this through a little better.

Posted by: Contagion at 12:12 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Yesterday Ktreva, Graumagus, my friend Bob and I went shooting. It was time to get some range time in. We had a great time and all had fun. Yet, to put a blemish on the day, we did have an incident early on.

I was at my station waiting for the next shooting break to put up a clean target. We had just arrived and the target on the stand down range was left over from a previous shooter. I figured this was a good time to get rid of some older ammo I didnÂ’t like. In my ammo locker was a box of American Eagle .357 rounds. I had picked two boxes of this up about 6 months ago. The last time I went shooting I used the first box and I didnÂ’t like the way it shot. It was dirty and the fouling kept gumming up the revolver.

I brought this box along just to burn it off, so I started shooting it. About twenty rounds into the box, the range officer comes over to me and asks what I was shooting. Of course I started with, it’s a Taurus .357 Tracker. He clarified he meant the ammo. To which I responded with, American Eagle .357. He then stated, “So you’re not using reloads?” No, these were factory loads. At that point, I asked him why. He told me that there was an incident and the guy next to me stated he got hit in the face with something from my revolver. Okay, it’s a revolver. Anyone that has ever shot a revolver knows that there is side discharge from the gap between the cylinder and the barrel. I apologized, and stated that the .357 does spray a lot.

The range officer said the kid stated something came off my revolver and hit the kid in the face cutting him. I allowed him to expect my pistol and everything looked fine. There was no damage to my revolver and nothing looked out of sorts. When the kid came back to get his stuff, he had a small cut on his right cheek. After asking if he was okay, I rechecked my revolver and the ammo. It all looked okay. I continued shooting, with the every couple of rounds having to wipe the fouling off the gun, the cylinder would start to not rotate. I also started paying more attention to the spray. Grau, who moved into the station the kid just left stated there was a lot of spray coming off the revolver. At one point I caught a burning ember on my hand while shooting.

Then on my second to last shot my revolver jammed. The cylinder would not rotate or open. Finally after some manipulation it opened and out fell a chunk of the copper jacketing from the bullet. It was a pretty good-sized chunk too, About 2 millimeter wide and 4 millimeters long. About this time, I started wondering if there was something wrong with my revolver. After wiping it down, I inspected it and everything looked good. The chambers and the barrel lined up properly; there was no play on the cylinder, any burrs or blemishes.

I figured I should try a couple of .38 loads from Aguila and see if I have any problems with it. If I do, I know then that I need to take the revolver to a gunsmith. I put 25 rounds through with out one problem. Next I tried some Remington .357 rounds to see what would happen. 50 rounds went through with out a problem. No fouling, reduced spray, no sluggishness on the cylinder. I was unable to duplicate any of the problems I was having with the American Eagle ammunition. We ended up putting over 300 rounds through it yesterday and only had a problem with the American Eagle.

I ended up having to fill out an incident report, apparently the kids father (Who was with him) complained, after they left the range. Poor Grau, Ktreva and Bob ended up having to sign as witnesses. Unfortunately, they didnÂ’t see anything. Hell I didnÂ’t see anything. I didnÂ’t know there was a problem until the range officer came over and started talking to me. Now, IÂ’m just waiting to see what this is going to turn into.

But I will tell you this; IÂ’m never buying the American Eagle ammunition by Federal ever again. It was dirty, it fouled up my revolver and now with this IÂ’m just going to assume itÂ’s unsafe. Sure, I have no way to prove that what the kid said is actually what happened or that what hit him in the face even came from my revolver, but with the rest of the facts IÂ’m going to assume it did.

So shooters, heed this warning, stay away from the American Eagle Ammunition.

Posted by: Contagion at 11:31 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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This weekend, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, IÂ’m taking Ktreva, some friends from work, and the zombie Graumagus shooting. What? ItÂ’s a national holiday. Just because he was shot doesnÂ’t mean shooting is not a good way to honor this completely useless day off of work. What the hell else are we going to do in the middle of January? Sit around and contemplate racial harmony? Nah, weÂ’re going to go hone our marksmanship.

Now as some of you may remember that I bought a crap load of ammo on Black Friday. That was 600 rounds. I already had 700 rounds in the house, bringing me up to 1,300 rounds. Which really should be more then enough for me to go shooting with this weekend and have a little extraÂ… just in case. (Read into that statement what you want, at this time I can neither confirm nor deny anything). I figured that Ktreva was not about to let me sink any more money on Ammo until I burned off some of what I have.

Then today on lunch we hit Gander Mountain to say hello to my buddy and pick up some targets and a cleaning kit for a rifle. My old one needed replacing. After so much use they do tend to wear out. While we where there my buddy tried to get me to buy an AR-15. The glare Ktreva gave him for asking, and me for thinking about it, was enough to make other shoppers wince back in fear. Figuring I was done, I was getting ready to check out. That was when my beautiful and wonderful wife said 6 little words that made my heart skip a beat.

“Why don’t you buy some ammo?”

Sure, since we are shooting we could use more ammo. I started with two boxes of .38, then two boxes .380, then two boxes .45. I looked at Ktreva to see if I’m pushing the limit but she was more interested in a pink shotgun they had. So I added one more box of each caliber. Then two boxes of .357. Still there was no reaction from Ktreva. Okay, give me 4 boxes of .22LR. (Yea, I know it’s cheap, but it’s fun.) Finally, she looked over at the stack of ammo and asked, “Do you think you need anymore?” At that point I decided I was starting to push my luck and told her that should be enough for along with what we have at home to last the weekend.

Just to recap, 150 .38 rounds, 150 .380 rounds, 150 .45 rounds, 100 .357 rounds and finally 200 .22LR rounds for a total of 750 more rounds. That should be enough ammo to keep us entertained for at least two hours.

But to me, the beauty of this story is not the ammo. ItÂ’s the fact that my wife loves me enough to support my hobby. What more could you want from a woman? Beautiful, sexy, looks good in tight jeans and lets me buy obnoxious amounts of ammo.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:50 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 Heh. You two just belong together... :-) Happy Shooting!

Posted by: Richmond at January 08, 2007 07:06 PM (e8QFP)

2 Yep - I'll agree. You are one very lucky fella. :-) But then again, I'm biased.

Posted by: Tammi at January 08, 2007 07:44 PM (3UQTn)

3 And she puts up with your crap, too :-)

Posted by: Harvey at January 08, 2007 09:25 PM (L7a63)

4 I buy my .22 ammo by the brick and shotgun ammo by the flat of ten boxes. almost all the other ammo I buy is in components, bullets, powder and primers, along with cartridge cases. Of course I have about ten bazillion .38. .357 .223 and .30-06 range pickup brass around to throw together for blasting ammo.
For what you spent today you could have bought a Lee turret press and a set of .38/.357 dies and a autodisc powder measure. Then you'd never have to buy .38s and .357 again. And it would only cost about thirty bucks to add a handgun cartridge to your line up.
Factory ammo is a waste of money.

Posted by: Peter at January 08, 2007 09:51 PM (YadGF)

5 so where you shooting? want help?

Posted by: og at January 08, 2007 11:18 PM (iqbdN)

6 We shoot here Og: http://www.bristolranges.com

Some different range rules, and the range fee for non-members is a bit stiff ($20) but it's a damn nice facility.

My problem is that I'm a bit tight this week so I may not bring the .44 mag (out of ammo and it's not cheap).

Sigh.

Guess I'll have to stick to the 300 rounds of .45, 1000 of .22, and 100 of .30-.30....

Who the hell am I kidding? I'll get at least one box of .44 ammo It's worth it just for the "Oh fuck!" factor when I let newbies squeeze a few off hehehe

Posted by: Graumagus at January 09, 2007 12:52 AM (Rayvs)

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I took last Thursday off from work. I figured I had some more vacation time coming to me and I needed to use it. Plus it gave me time to help prepare for the party. Since I had taken the time off, I also figured it would allow me to get some extra sleep. Yea, that didnÂ’t work.

Thursday morning Clone comes and wakes me up, saying heÂ’s hungry. Letting Ktreva sleep, cause she had the whole week off and was just plum exhausted not getting her 10 hours of sleep, I went to feed the boy. After I put him in his chair and got him his breakfast, it dawned on me that the whole house humidifier we have wasnÂ’t running. Sure enough, it was out of water. I pulled out the two 2.5 gallon tanks and filled them up. While walking back to the humidifier with the tank, it started to slip out of my hands. I moved really quickly to catch it, and at the same time driving my left foot right into CloneÂ’s chair.

There was a pop and pain coming from my middle toe on my left foot. I looked at it, and it seemed okay. I went, finished getting dressed, including putting on socks and shoes and started about my day. The day was filled with shopping, that meant a lot of walking. By the time we got home that night my foot was throbbing and really aching. I told Ktreva I thought I broke my toe, and explained what happened. She told me to take off my sock and shoe so she could take a look at it.

As soon as I had the sock off she winced. My toe was black and purple. It had swollen up and looked like an over stuffed blood sausage. But most noticeably was the way it bent at a 30-degree angle to the left over the toe next to it. Yea, that didnÂ’t look right. She told me to go to the hospital. Why? Why would I go to the hospital? All they are going to do is take some x-rays, say there is nothing they can do and tape it up after straightening it out. Well except take my $50.00 ER copay. I had a broken toe some ten years ago and thatÂ’s all they did then.

Ktreva ran and got the bandage tape we have while I straightened my toe. It only hurt for about 20 seconds when I pulled on it. It was the popping, crunching sound it made and the feel of it going back in place that really made the whole experience interesting. I taped it up and off I went. Of course I made sure I had my steel toed boots on at all times, no need for someone to needlessly step on it since it happened. Everything seems to be okay.

Sure itÂ’s still a little swollen, and there is a good discoloration to it, but itÂ’s feeling much better.

Posted by: Contagion at 06:01 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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