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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Arrgh!

OK, obviously I’ve pissed off the universe today.

I had a post finished, and my Internet connection dropped out.

I went back to writing while I waited for the connection to come back up.

Some friends called, they were cleaning a Ruger Mk III 22cal pistol. They’d taken it apart and couldn’t get it back together properly. The slide kept jamming. This is a common problem with this particular weapon, like most weapons there’s a trick to reassembling it correctly – and the Ruger is a bigger pain in the ass than most, it's like German engineering, or rather over-engineering. (Update, Note: just to be clear, Ruger is an American weapon). I hate Rugers, they're fine weapons, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like working on a BMW – you’ve got to be a humpbacked four-armed, left-handed, googly-eyed midget to work on the damned thing. Also it helps if you know how to swear in German. You have to point the barrel down while inserting the main spring, then flip the weapon over so the barrel points up and the hammer lever drops into the pivot slot on mainspring lever. Only then can you tension the spring and close the housing. If you don’t do this correctly, the hammer is forced up into the firing position and doesn’t retract, which means the slide jams against it. This process sounds easy, and it is, but it’s not something you can talk somebody through on the phone. So I had them come over and showed them how to properly disassemble and reassemble the weapon. If it seems odd that they didn’t know how to take apart their own weapon, well, it’s a 22cal Ruger. A weapon like that gets cleaned about once a decade, usually (unless you’re anal retentive about it like I am and clean them after every firing. A clean weapon is a happy weapon. Just sayin’).

OK great, got that done. Just as I was heading inside to check the Internet connection, the power went out.

It came back on after five minutes.

I wasn’t worried, both my word processor and blog editor are set to back up every couple of minutes.

Except, of course, they didn’t.

I lost the entire blog post and 2000 words of the novel. Goddamn it all to hell.

Also did I mention that this week is spring break? No? Well it is. So the 12-year old is under foot all day, which is why you’re not getting anything deep, blogging wise.

And now the Internet is back up and I’ve got nothing for you, deep or otherwise.

So, here have some ShopKat:

ShopKat

[Note the visual pun: Copy Cat, hardee har har]

Apparently the paper towels gave her some attitude, ShopKat doesn’t take that kind of shit lying down. Certainly the paper towels will think twice about offending her again. Oh, yes, they will.

Before you ask, yes that’s her box. It’s full of old towels and it sits on the work bench next to my carving station. Because otherwise we have issues over who owns that chair. Once I put the box on the workbench, she stopped trying to kick me out of my chair, and if you don’t think a two pound cat can kick a 180 pound combat veteran out of his own chair, you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong, I direct your attention to the aforementioned paper towels.

Hence the box. Now everybody is happy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out why the backup didn’t work and recreate ten pages of novel.

13 comments:

  1. I thought it was Janiece that was being kicked off the internets. I guess the Internet Authorities got the wrong Navy vet in the UCF. It's an easy mistake. You all look alike.

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  2. It's the knuckle draggin' and the trail of coffee drippings.

    And our command of language...

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  3. Is ShopKat actually preggers, or what?

    Details, man!

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  4. hmm... It would appear that ShopKat™ and RanchCat™ are related, possibly... Copies... ::raises eyebrow in Spock fashion::

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  5. It would appear that ShopKat is simply overfed and not knocked up after all.

    I have to take all the animals in this week for a check up. I'll have her tested. And no, John, she does not appear to have worms either - which are uncommon here in alaska.

    Karl, very similar, though ShopKat is more black than white.

    And now that I've mostly recreated the lost chapter, mostly, I need to head out to the shop and turn a couple of bowls. The bowl I did for Aliy and Allen got some attention and a couple other people want one similar. So, you know, yay!

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  6. RanchCat looks like he/she is lookin' to have a bunch more relatives.

    The slut.

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  7. Nah, she's just teasing mid-roll. But I dare you to try getting past those harmless looking little pink paws... ;) (See shredded roll of paper towel above x10)

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  8. I'm glad to see Shop Kat is doing well, even if we can't see how overfed she is in that picture.

    Also glad she most likely doesn't have worms. Ew.

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  9. Sorry about the 2,000 words, that sucks. Hopefully they weren't too hard to reclaim from your psyche.

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  10. I think I'd be spitting mad at losing 2000 words. Although, for the current project, I know I've written some pieces before that I'm now stringing together, but I can't find the original writing. So I recreated the scenes, which (at least to my mind) I think I did a better job of it the second time around.

    Maybe shop cat was also frustrated by the poor internet service and figured the paper towels had something to do with it. It's a known fact that cats get frustrated when they can pull down their twitter feeds.

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  11. I thought Bill Ruger was an American? ;-)

    I own two Rugers, including a .22 as described. I don't think I've ever felt the need to field-strip it though. (The Ruger revolver doesn't field-strip).

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  12. Chris, you are, of course, correct in that Sturm Ruger is an American Firearms company and both founders were Americans. But the MKIII is based on the German recoil system, not the Browning Fast Recoil system. I think they're over engineered and too complicated, especially that goofy mainspring assembly.

    Revolver wise, I think Ruger makes fine revolvers - but for various reasons they just don't fit my hands or shooting style. I don't like either the Blackhawk or the Redhawk and I think they suffer in comparison to the Colt Anaconda.

    But then again, I swear by Colt firearms, and was one of the very last guys to carry the Colt 1911A1 Government Model .45ACP on active duty - because I despise the Beretta 9mm above damn near all other firearms. I also went to Colt Armorer's School and to Smith & Wesson Range Master Academy and Tactical Survivors School - so I may be a little prejudiced against Ruger.

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  13. I have very pleasant memories of standing in the basement range at the NROTC building at Northwestern, firing the 1911A1 under the tutelage of a very crusty and wise (and amusing) USMC gunnery sergeant. He always joked that I should only ever shoot one shot with the .45, because every damned day my first round would be dead center in the target and then I'd be high and right on all the rest due to anticipating the recoil. (grin) Stupid human tricks.

    I should point out that these were regular classes listed under Phys. Ed. and most of the time we shot .22 target rifles and .22 target pistols -- the .45s were a treat for those of us who qualified with exceptional scores.

    Dr. Phil

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