… please send donations to the “Buy TD a New Hard Drive Fund”. Just kidding, I already have the replacement drive on hand.

I spent a good chunk of Sunday overhauling my desktop Mac. Full backup, wipe the boot disk, clean install of OS X 10.5, reinstall all apps, migrate data back over, the whole deal. Set myself up with a fresh new system with everything updated to the latest version.

So of course my hard drive chose today to grind to a halt. Granted, it was a five-year-old Seagate that had been spun up for at least 95% of those five years, so it lived a nice full life. The good side: the drive died right after I’d done a full backup. The bad side: I wasted all that time on Sunday getting the system set up JUST the way I wanted it. Ah well, shit happens.

Uh, you folks ARE doing regular backups, right?

Been massively busy this past week, and the whole weekend was given over to computer overhauls here at Unforgiving Central. I now have a Home Theater! Sorta! Well, at least I hooked up my laptop to an old CRT TV via an S-video cable! So I can watch the entire run of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on a big(-ish) screen! Exclamation points!

Oh, and the broken Ruger got picked up by UPS and should be back in New Hampshire sometime this week. Of course, since they use UPS as their shipping company, I’m sure it’ll be even MORE broken by the time it gets back to them. I just damn well better have a fixed gun back in my hands within a month. Broken guns make TD grumpy.

Alright, mebbe I can draft some proper updates while I’m at work tomorrow. For now, I’m firing up the first KTMA episodes of MST3K. Damn I love this show.

My first attempt at getting Ruger to fix my broken stock was a bit less than satisfying; some weaselly, uninterested dullard of a customer service rep insisted I’d have to pay out of my own pocket to ship the gun back to Ruger, where they would “evaluate” it. Would I be reimbursed for the shipping expenses? “Perhaps.”

Fuck that.

Called back, got an intelligent, helpful woman on the line, and made my case: Here’s a brand-new gun, unfired, with a crack in the stock. I’ve been a happy Ruger customer for years and want to stay that way. I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask me to shell out $50 to ship back an $850 gun with a manufacturing flaw. What can we do about this?

She put me on hold for a minute and came back with a very sensible reply: Box up the gun, UPS will be by to pick it up.

Yes, that will do. Thank you very much.

They’re supposed to pick it up on Friday. I’ll keep y’all posted.

Yeah, you know that really pretty stock I showed off in my last post? It’s going back to Ruger. I was looking over the gun tonight and noticed this:

Nice little hairline crack that would undoubtedly grow and fail completely on a gun with this level of recoil. The gun’s brand new, unfired since it left the factory, and the original box is in very good shape with no signs of damage during shipping. I believe the gun left the factory like this and no one noticed the crack.

Very, very, very annoying. I’ll be calling Ruger tomorrow morning and arranging to ship it back.

… because the batteries in my digital camera died as soon as I took this one, slightly blurry picture.

Josh: Ruger #1’s are awesome…for single shot rifles chambered to fire five dollar bills

Yes, Josh, yes they are.

I did some online shopping yesterday for my sooper-seekrit upcoming project. Well, I TRIED to. I need two different rifle powders and some Federal 215 primers. NO ONE had them in stock. Anywhere. At any price. I know the panic buying on guns is still going full-steam, but I hadn’t realized that the reloading market was just as crazy.

This isn’t too much of a headache for me; we won’t have decent rifle-shooting weather here for another 2 or 3 months, minimum, so I can wait awhile on buying components. But damn, I was not expecting them to be totally unavailable!

The SHOT show doesn’t kick off until later this week, but I just may have stumbled across one of Ruger’s new offerings a bit before its official unveiling.

Shooters with long memories might recall that Ruger used to offer Mini-14s with factory-installed folding stocks, back before the late Bill Ruger’s ill-considered attempt at gun-banner appeasement.

Well, it looks like Ruger is poised to reintroduce an updated Mini-14 Factory Folder, this time with a stock that both folds AND collapses, along with the de rigueur rail farm on the forend.

Nicely done, Ruger. It’s about time!

Click here to see the pic on Ruger’s site.

Fightin’ off a bug of some kind, which isn’t a whole lot of fun, and I’m also truly saddened by Ron Asheton’s death. The Stooges mean a helluva lot to me, and I always especially respected Ron. Great guitar player and, by all accounts I’ve ever read, a great guy, which is a rare thing in rock ‘n’ roll.

I missed seeing the Stooges the last time they played Detroit, not realizing it would be the LAST time they play Detroit. Damn.

Off of Fun House, here’s “Down on the Street”:

Thanks, Ron.