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crimsonlonghorn

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by crimsonlonghorn

  1. Recognize that it sounds like I am complaining about having to go on vacation (poor me) and on some level I guess I am, but there is definitely a Wife Angle to the story I have. Last year during covid at the last minute the family decided to drive to Gulf Shores. We were able to find a rental and liked the house so much we decided to go back this year. Back in January I made a reservation for the last week of July, which fit our schedule very well, being between the end of one son's summer baseball season and the other son's start of HS football practice. I like going to the beach and have been looking forward to this trip for a while. In April, older son and I find out that our favorite coach at Colorado State is having his track and field (i.e. discus) camp again this summer after being canceled in 2020. We decide to go. Don't want to fly anywhere right now, so we are going to drive up on Thursday, attend the camp, then drive back home on Monday. 2 days in the car, 2 days at camp, then 2 more days in the car. The camp was last weekend (July 10-11). Mrs CL decides she wants to go to Colorado with us. OK fine. But then right before we leave she says, "Why don't we stay a few days in Colorado and have a vacation? Seems a shame to spend all that time in the car for just a weekend." So we end up staying in Colorado for the whole week and a trip that originally was going to be around a $1,000 all in (camp fee, hotel, gas, etc) expanded to about $5,000 after an extra hotel room for both boys for a week plus more meals and more gas driving around up there (A gallon of regular is now almost $4 in Denver, btw), plus hiring the pet sitter for a week. We got home last night and start talking about having to leave again in a week. Mrs CL says, "Wow! We're really blowing the budget on vacations! Too bad we can't cancel Gulf Shores now. We probably shouldn't go on two vacations every year. We probably should have skipped Colorado." I point out that she wasn't originally invited to Colorado, that the original trip was just to attend the camp, and that Gulf Shores is supposed to be our "real" vacation anyway and all the money we spent in Colorado was her choice, not mine. Tone was not appreciated.
  2. Thank you. They talked me into upgrading the wood at the very end and I'm glad they did. Sent me pictures of blanks via email and I just picked the one I liked the best. It was easy to tell the difference between "SC1" base-level wood and "SC3" wood. My only regret is that I had intended to go to Italy to get fitted in person and pick out the wood but the travel restrictions right now prevented that.... I still wanted the gun so I just sent them my measurements from Larry Feland and they seem to have converted OK into metric because the gun fits pretty much perfectly. I sold my company a year ago and made a little coin, so this was my "trophy" from that experience. I'll probably never buy another gun as expensive. But this one is pretty cool.
  3. So excited about this. Guess it’s in line with the other inventory observations people have been having lately. Nature is healing!
  4. Welp, my P- skeet barrel set showed up late last week from Italy. Right at about 10 months from the order to the delivery. Thus far the fit is perfect and all four barrels have busted a lot of clays in the few days I have had it. So much better than a tube set, IMO. All four barrels weigh the same and it's much easier to switch between gauges without having to hammer and clean and hammer and clean over and over. In my brief time of having it so far, I can tell it's a lot more "pointable" than any other gun I've owned. Without the tubes in the barrels, there is less weight in front and I can find wayward targets more easily. I anticipate this being the case with the other High-Tech that I bought now that I can remove some of the barrel weight and dedicate it solely to sporting clays. Going to do a .410-only shoot at the end of this month and then my first four (5) gun event with it will be in Dallas at the end of August.
  5. My neighborhood was only annexed a couple of years ago before by the city next door. Before that we had contracted patrols with the constable and the sheriff's dept and they very rarely ticketed people for minor infractions (like 43 in a 35) who had an HOA sticker on their car. They were mostly looking for outsiders and they'd only really go after local people doing 25 or 30 over the limit or blasting through the school zone or whatever. After we got annexed, our new municipal overlords terminated the other contracts and started routine police patrols and pretty much went wild writing tickets for EVERYTHING, including minor speeding and rolling through stop signs and failure to signal. Doesn't matter if you have a decal. Neighborhood people have been pissed now for a couple of years. Most of them moved in here because it WASN'T in the city limits and then the city moved in anyway. (They also fucked up our trash service, the bastards, and also give citations to homeowners whose trees were too far out over the street... I mean, fuck those guys - nobody asked for their bullshit) So no, I don't feel much compunction pushing back on their tax collectors.
  6. The furthest I have ever had to go from Houston was Brenham, which wasn't so bad. Just had to budget the time and I realize that being self-employed gives me flexibility others don't have. Not sure what I would do if I ever got one further away. One advantage I have is that I don't typically drive excessively fast on surface streets (i.e. 43 in a 35 is as fast as I go and I typically get ignored) and I always make an effort not to be the fastest guy on the freeway. On rural highways I have a pretty good radar detector that does a very good job as well that allows me to slow down before the cop can see me. I suspect that I'd probably just do DD if I got one that was more than 2-3 hours away from home, but luckily I haven't had to make that choice yet.
  7. Followup on this one because I feel like it and this is where I posted it on Surly to start. My strategy on nuisance traffic tickets is to always go to court and force the judge and the prosecutor to "play court" and do their jobs. While it is called "municipal court" or "justice court" what it really is is a collections agency designed to use the force of law to intimidate you into paying them money. They don't actually want to have an actual court proceeding, they just want to scare you enough to make you pay them some extra tax revenue that in turn goes to pay the salary of the prosecutor and the judge doing the collecting. (There is a massive conflict of interest when you get down to it.) My strategy is always just to file a bunch of motions and ask for discovery and request multiple rulings from the judge and while they might play along at first, eventually the prosecutor (and usually the judge) will dismiss the case and say "GTFO and quit wasting my time." Most people just give up and pay because going to court is inconvenient, but it works exactly the same way for the court itself. They don't like being inconvenienced. I've never had to pay a speeding ticket or do defensive driving since I started doing it this way 20 years ago. Yes, it can take a lot of time, but I find it to be kind of fun, too. On this one, I was ready to go to court and instead they called me last week and wanted to set up a fucking zoom pretrial hearing. I said I wanted to do it in person and they said, "Nope, we are only doing zoom right now." Which, is contrary to my strategy. The flunky prosecutor isn't going to be inconvenienced if he never has to get out of his fucking chair. So I went down there last Friday and filed a continuance motion and asked them to delay everything until we could do it in person, including the pretrial hearing. I cited all the ways that zoom hearings are detrimental to a defendant's 6th Amendment rights and that the Texas supreme court has now stated that in-person proceedings can start up again or be delayed until at least August 1. And finally I told them that agreeing to do a pretrial hearing via zoom would bias the judge against my motion, so I needed a ruling on my motion before I could do anything at all via zoom. Got this via email today. Fuck those guys. People should never put up with this nonsense. All you have to do is push back and they'll roll over. They just want your money and they don't want to do anything to earn it.
  8. In theory it is not different, but in practice a lot more people smoke pot than care about suppressors and that will get reflected in law enforcement priorities. Then you've got public polarization around "silencers" and firearms in general - there are a lot more hardcore opponents of "gun culture" than drug culture at this point - and the fact that federal enforcement comes from two different agencies within the DOJ. Bottom line is that the politics have changed for most drugs and the feds now care much more about gun laws than pot laws.
  9. Funny enough, I got pulled over earlier this week for the first time since I got my LTC. 43 in a 35 - I'm glad I could help the nice officer meet his quota this month. (literally I drove past the same spot 5 minutes later and he had someone else pulled over) Anyway, he asked for my DL and I gave it to him and offered that I had "two firearms" in the car. He asked if either were accessible. I pointed at the one under my seat and he said, "Just don't go for yours and I won't go for mine." Was very laid back. I expected him to make me get out so he could secure it during the stop but he didn't. Feel bad for him that after all of that now he's going to have to go to court and eventually the city won't get a dime out of me in the end, but I guess at the end of the day a guy's gotta eat and go collect revenue for the suburbs.
  10. UPS showed up with my latest lottery winnings yesterday. 4 flats. Good thing I'm not a poor.
  11. Larry Feland in Cypress is my guy. He is known more for shotguns but he does fine work on rifles too.
  12. In my car, I have a holster that fits between the seat and the console. It's hidden from the outside and my car is parked in the garage at night, so I'm not too worried about someone getting to it. In my old beat up farm truck, I have a hidden compartment under the arm rest in the split bench seat (i.e. there is a second compartment on the bottom half of the arm rest), so I keep a pistol in there, too. I'll never draw either one particularly quickly, but if I ever decide I need a gun, I can still get to one fairly easily.
  13. This is the main reason I got mine at first. I hardly ever carry but damn it's nice to buy a new toy and cut the waiting time standing around by at least half.
  14. Yeah, this was the one... Texas, uhhhh, beat Iowa State in Austin in Chuck's last year.
  15. Cannot believe I'm now regularly paying $15/box + shipping for 20 ga target ammo, yet here we are. That being said, at least it's out there and (occasionally) available.
  16. I have heard from people who know him and are familiar that he is extremely smart and shrewd compared to his public image. Not that it's just a big act, just that he emphasizes certain aspects of his personality because that's really who he is and who people want to see.... he's not a dumb jock all the way through. Regardless of the image, that was a cool video.
  17. My brother recently offered to let me borrow his boat to transport my guns from one side of Lake JB Thomas to the other. That's a much quicker route than driving between Ira and Gail. I sure hope nothing happens to them while we are out on the water. FINGERS CROSSED!
  18. Careful, Joe! You're going to waste political capital! https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-gun-control-executive-actions-violence-epidemic/
  19. I just got another SG Ammo email this morning and prices seem to be getting slightly better. Still outrageously high compared to the prices I paid to them in December of 2019 right before the run started (see below).
  20. Doing an Easter prime rib on the Joetisserie this morning for lunch. Starting it a little bit lower temp at 275 so it doesn't cook too fast while I'm at church. If things go right I'll pump up the temp when I get home to about 400 and it will sear the outside and finish cooking the inside to about 125-130. Fireboard don't fail me now.
  21. I originally paid extra for the fan that comes with the Fireboard but I didn't care for it and swapped it for the Pit Viper fan from the BBQG. Mashup works great.
  22. Mrs CL has a horrible habit of improvising when she cooks. Not necessarily substitutions, but actual improvisations to recipes to try and make them... better? Tonight my oldest had baseball practice. Wife says dinner will be waiting for its when we get home. She is going to brown some chicken and mix in some canned Alfredo sauce with fettuccine noodles. Sounds great, I'm looking forward to it. I get home and she has decided to throw in some frozen mixed vegetables: carrots, peas, and corn, plus some chopped celery and onions too. Because all that shit goes with traditional fettuccine Alfredo. It was vile and I threw it in the trash and had a hot dog for dinner instead.
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