I Love to Work at Nothing all Day

I’ve had a somewhat arduous couple of days. I bought another gun, and there were problems. On top of that, my car’s air conditioning went out, and I became obsessed with fixing it. Finally, I have two guests coming for the weekend, so I’ve been cooking and trying to make the house presentable.

Why did I buy another gun? Because I could, mainly. Also, I had no deer rifle. I had a couple of Eastern-bloc guns that could be used for deer, and I also had an LR-308, a PSL, a Saiga-12, a Ruger Precision Rifle, and a K31. I didn’t have anything a normal human being would use.

Well. I did have a 16-gauge FUDD shotgun, but that’s an unusual choice.

I went with 6.5 Creedmoor. In my opinion, it’s the new .30-06. If someone tells you to get in the truck and go hunting in North America, and all you know is that the prey is over 50 pounds, the 6.5 Creedmoor will kill it. The .30-06 and its short-action copy, the .308, are pretty much obsolete because the 6.5 Creedmoor does everything they do, better. The 6.5 is very, very popular, and the simple reason is that it made a number of older calibers unnecessary. It’s a great hunting round, and because it’s popular, there are a ton of different factory loads for it. If you don’t like factory loads, there is a world of load data available. It’s the Glock of rifle calibers. It’s common, and it works well.

I decided to splurge this time. I love Savages because they’re very accurate and not expensive, but this time I moved a few links up the food chain and bought a Tikka T3x Superlite. Tikka is a Finnish company, and they do very good work. I believe Tikka is really Sako now, and it’s also Beretta. I’m not sure. Gun companies gobble each other up like crazy; Remington/Marlin is now Ruger, for example, and Thompson/Center is Smith & Wesson. Anyway, the name still exists, and they still make the guns in Finland, so the quality has been maintained. So I’m told.

The Superlite is a real hunter’s gun. It’s very light, as you might deduce from the name. The whole thing weighs 6 pounds. It has a fluted stainless barrel and a fancy plastic stock covered with a camo pattern. It only holds three rounds in the box, so it will be one of the last guns President Harris confiscates, assuming people follow through on their insane threats to vote for Biden.

It still amazes me that people take him seriously. It’s not surprising that he became Vice President, because that’s a position typically occupied by certified cretins, but putting him in the Oval Office and actually letting him sit behind the desk is about like putting an unelected third-rate lawyer in charge of a nation’s healthcare simply because her husband won the presidency.

When I was a kid, sometimes my dad would let me sit on his lap and steer the car, but he never got out and told me to go pick up some bread.

I ordered the Superlite from Bass Pro’s website. I had been looking for a Superlite in a color I could stand, and when I saw it at Bass Pro, I couldn’t resist. The picture on the site showed a nice right-handed bolt gun. When I ordered it, I got an email that showed the same picture. When I looked my order up on the site later…same picture.

You can see where this is going.

I went to pick the gun up, and the girl at the counter asked if she should insert the bolt for me while I was inspecting it, and I told her not to bother. Then I got home, inserted the bolt, and noticed it was on the wrong side of the gun.

I had a $1000 non-returnable left-handed rifle.

I called the local Bass Pro immediately, and they told me not to fire it. They said to wait, and they would call me back. I also called the website’s number, and I got an Indian guy with no authority. All he could do was repeat their no-return policy.

At least I think that’s what he was repeating.

I said I knew there was someone there who could make a return happen, and I asked to talk to that person. That person was not even a little helpful. She refused to even discuss a return, and she said I might get somewhere talking to the local people.

Gun shops do not like to take guns back. The rationale is that once a gun goes through a background check, it’s used. Do you buy that? I don’t work at a gun store, but it’s hard for me to believe the government has people who go around to places like Dick’s and Cabela’s, checking serial numbers to see if they’re selling NICS-processed guns as new. I don’t believe that happens. I think gun stores are just worried about idiots who shoot 100 rounds, get buyer’s remorse, and try to bring back dirty guns.

Change my mind.

I’ve probably returned 25 new items in their original packaging to retailers over the last year, and never once did anyone tell me they would have to be sold as used goods. Not until yesterday, when it really mattered.

Anyway, the local people called back, and they said they would be more than happy to take a return. And they had the right-handed version of the gun at the store, for $50 less. They tried to do the second background check without charging me, but the system would not let them. They accidentally refunded me over $9 for something I hadn’t paid for, and when they caught it, they told me not to worry about it.

God bless them. I think I could actually have made a profit reselling the gun on Gunbroker, but I might also have taken a $300 loss, and I did not want the hassle.

I made 4 45-mile trips between my house and Bass Pro, and I had to wait for two background checks in one day. That killed Thursday for me.

Next time I buy a new gun, I will examine it like an MSNBC grunt trying to find racism in a video of Trump eating a bologna sandwich.

Have I actually hunted for deer? Well, no. But I am determined to get around to it.

On the third trip, I noticed the car’s air conditioning was blowing warm. Great. I also had a problem with the car overheating at low speeds. I believe this is because the water bottle I jammed between the idiotic louvers on the radiator has flattened out.

Many cars now have shutters on their radiators. They make cars slightly more aerodynamic at high speed, and this gets you…get this…a 1% increase in gas mileage. Look it up. These shutters break down all the time, and replacing them is a giant job. Mine failed, and when I realized how worthless they were, I decided the best thing was to prop them open. I plan to put a screw in the frame to keep them open permanently. There is no down side to keeping them open, apart from that gigantic mileage decrease.

This is where leftism, which is behind the radiator shutters, gets us. It gives you a $300 part that saves you $5 per year for three years and then fails.

Wonder where the energy to make the part and ship it comes from. Fairy flatulence, I guess.

I’ve learned a great deal about air conditioning since last night. First of all, my car’s compressor isn’t turning on. The electromagnetic clutch won’t engage., There are a bunch of possible reasons. There is a fuse. There is a relay that turns the compressor on. If the system is low on refrigerant, it refuses to engage the clutch. There is a refrigerant pressure switch, and if it goes bad, the system thinks the gas has leaked out, and the compressor doesn’t turn.

Today I spent a great deal of time fooling with the car. I replaced the relay with a horn relay that was next to it. No joy. I checked the fuse. It was fine. I bypassed the relay, and the compressor turned, causing the air to blow cold. I tried to shoot some refrigerant into the system, because I figured that would tell me whether lack of refrigerant was the problem. It didn’t help.

I’m down to two likely possibilities. Either I failed to get enough refrigerant into it to make it catch, or the pressure switch is bad. In any case, the only way I can get cold air is to jam a paper clip into two holes the relay used to fill. That won’t get it done.

I forced myself to give up on the car. I had to clean up the house. I’m way behind. I also had to make a cheesecake for my guests. Right now, I’m writing to kill time while it bakes (instead of doing more cleaning).

Tomorrow, I’m going to make smoked spare ribs, barbecue beans, Texas toast, corn on the cob, and macaroni and cheese. And yes, I plan to make my guests clean up the kitchen. Because I expect to be recovering on the floor.

I should have bought smoked sausage to go in the beans. Didn’t occur to me. I bought bacon instead. Still, it should be one of the best meals served in the state tomorrow, barring a mishap.

The cheesecake is now cooling. You are dismissed.