The Recycle Bin

Wishing you and yours a very merry Christmas!  A few random thoughts before we move on to Christmas time.

Sierra Pro Lives Again.  No idea how or why, but the gun cocked fine yesterday morning, which made for a fun filled day of shooting paper and plinking.  Alas, no squirrels, but still plenty of fun.

The Sierra Pro definitely likes Crosman Premier Super Match (7.9 gr) and Beeman H&N Match wadcutter (8.09 gr) pellets better than anything else I have tried.  I am working on a write-up; maybe later this week.

After last night, I am 4 – 2 with my 2007 Bowl predictions.  It is a good thing I do not put money on this stuff.  The first six games pretty much sucked, were pointless, and not worth watching, but I watched a few minutes of each anyway.  We get a couple of days off before Bowl season resumes on December 26.

I have spent a little time with WoW last weekend.  For those few of you wondering what and where, I am currently adventuring in Dustwallow Marsh.  Last night I found my first “blue” item, a Midnight Mace, but it is not something that my mage can use.  I need to see if I can train to learn how to use a mace, or if I need to throw it up on the Auction House.

The Atlanta Falcons stink.  Before the season started I predicted five wins; these guys are even worse than I expected.  Hopefully a decent draft pick is in order.

Family time with the Grinch last night, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer this afternoon, Candlelight service tonight, and then Santa time.  Some neat stuff is in order for the kids tomorrow; more to come on that later.

Day 4 of this year’s Bowl season brings us another not so classic match up.  This time we get #24 Boise State vs. East Carolina in the Sheraton Hawaii Bowl.  I am not sure who makes this stuff up.  Does anyone really care how the second (or is it third or fourth) best team in C-USA (that would be the 7-5 Pirates) match up against the second best team in the WAC (10-2 Broncos)?

Boise State is the pick, but that does not mean that we have to respect the WAC.

2007 Bowl predictions:  4 – 1.

I planned to write about some shooting that I did earlier today, complete with best pellets per group, highest and lowest scoring group, and standard deviation per group. Instead I am writing a somewhat disappointing entry. My Crosman Sierra Pro bit the dust today.

After getting really comfortable with the sights on the gun, I decided to scope the Sierra Pro this afternoon, right before sunset, or as I like to call it, squirrel hunting time. After getting the scope on, I took the gun out to sight in the scope, and could not get the damn thing to cock. My assumption is that the mainspring is broken. I can break the barrel, but it just will not catch/cock.

I am frustrated with the timing. I planned to do a lot of shooting today, tomorrow, and Christmas Eve. I am not sure how long it will take me to track down someone from Crosman to put in a return authorization. The gun does have a one year limited warranty, and the good folks at Crosman have already replaced my scope. I don’t doubt that Crosman will repair (or replace) my Sierra Pro.

The problem is that the Crosman customer service form is down for maintenance, it is the weekend, it is Christmas week, and I expect shipping the gun to Crosman will be a pain. I do not have a box for shipping a gun, and I am sure it will cost a pretty penny.

The only silver lining is that I may have something more interesting to shoot on Christmas. More to come on that later.

Day 3 of the 2007 Bowl season presents us with three terrible games, none worth watching.  All three are reasons to reduce the number of Bowl games.

The papajons.com Bowl features 7-5 Southern Miss vs. #22 9-3 Cincinnati.  I do not respect the Big East team, but a semi-top tier Big East team has to be better than a so-so Conference USA squad.  Cincinnati is the winning pick.

The New Mexico Bowl features a mediocre 6-6 Nevada and 8-4 Mountain West New Mexico.  If you cannot win in the WAC (Nevada went 4-4 in conference games), how do you expect to win any sort of Bowl game no matter how meaningless the game?  New Mexico is the easy pick, but it does not mean that the Mountain West is a respectable conference.

I am not sure what a Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl is, but we get one anyway.  6-6 UCLA takes on 10-2 #17 Brigham Young.  Would you believe that BYU ran the table in the Mountain West, going 8-0?  Not sure if that means anything, but I think they will outplay UCLA.

2007 Bowl predictions:  1 – 1.

A few nights ago I stumbled across a story at Blu-ray.com that described a minor problem with Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-ray release.

To be honest, I do not think I would ever notice the problem. I have not even watched any of my Pirates movies, but I figured what the heck, I need to get me some of that (replacement disk program). I emailed Disney and asked them to do the needful.

Less than 72 hours after I emailed Disney, I received the following email:

Dear Jonathan,

Thank you for your email. We have received your contact information and will be sending you a new Pirates of the Caribbean Blu-ray disc shortly.

If you have any other questions please reply with history to this email.

Thank you for your patience.

Walt Disney Home Entertainment Technical Support

06

Nice customer support, which is pretty rare these days.

Another day, another Bowl game.  Today we get a classic match up between Florida Atlantic and Memphis in the New Orleans Bowl.  Once upon a no so distant past, this was North Texas territory, but as I said, we get a different sort of compelling game between the best in the Sun Belt and the fourth or fifth best in Conference USA.  To be honest, I am not even sure why they schedule this sort of game.  The $325K payout is pretty much a joke, but let’s move on to the prediction.

I am going to give this one to Schnellenberger’s Owls because their non conference schedule was more compelling than Memphis.  The Owls lost to Oklahoma State, #14 Kentucky, #6 South Florida, and #12 Florida.  They also beat bottom of the bottom of the Big Ten barrel, Minnesota.  Memphis?  Does playing Mississippi (perennial SEC joke) and Jacksonville State (who?) count as a non conference schedule?

2007 Bowl predictions:  0 – 1.

Fairly simple tonight as things kick off with Navy and Utah in the Poinsettia Bowl.  I know the betting lines are going with Utah, but I am going to support Navy.  Option attacks rule!

Just noticed that I am inching closer to 10K spams to hit (or try to hit the site).

Akismet has caught 9,947 spam for you since you first installed it.

While I think it is very impressive that Akismet has caught so much spam (very little gets past it), it is very pathetic that so much spam makes it to this humble site.

Right before Thanksgiving I wrote that I sent the scope that came with my Sierra Pro back to Crosman for warranty repairs (or exchange). The new scope arrived a little over a week ago.

Our story begins with me sending a customer service email to Crosman asking about my scope. A nice lady (Kim) responds and tells where to send my scope. An email or two later and maybe 10 business days after I mailed the scope back to Crosman, a new scope showed up on my front porch. By new, I mean brand new, as in new in a Center Point box, complete with scope, scope covers, and mounting assembly.

I was impressed by the quick response, and the fact that Crosman provided a complete replacement, which to me was above and beyond the call of duty. I now have my first “extra” air gun parts (I still have the original scope covers and mount).

While I have not put the scope back on my Sierra Pro because I am having a good time shooting with the standard sights, I do want to give credit where credit is due. Thanks to Crosman (and Kim) for the great customer service!

Last weekend, to reward myself for hard day of working in the yard, I sampled a couple of cold ones (Georgia Brown and a High Life), and decided to take some target practice. I was on the hunt looking to eliminate a pest or two from the backyard. Some call in cruel, mean and hateful, but I call it target shooting; good old fashion pest controlling fun.

It did not take too long before I had one of the gray varmints in my sight. I took careful aim and thumped the critter so hard he jumped straight up, and then flipped and flopped (the squirrel two step) for a couple of seconds. I figured he was a goner, so I started looking for his friends.

After I was finished with my shooting, I went to find squirrel number five, but the tree rat was no where insight. I realized that I must have shocked the varmint; not a clean kill. I decided that he must have escaped into the big pile of limbs and brush that I piled up earlier in the afternoon. I was not really in the mood to start hauling the yard waste to the street, but that was going to be the only way to recover the squirrel. As I got closer to the bottom of the pile I found the telltale signs of my hunt. A drop of blood here and a drop of blood there. The squirrel did manage to try to escape into the rubbish pile, but ultimately he did escape out of my backyard, never to be seen again.

This morning I saw a tree rat out the kitchen window, and the game was on. What luck! Squirrelly number six decided to perch in the wrong place, on the lower part of my palm tree, which provided me the perfect backdrop for a carefully (or not so carefully) placed shot. I quickly and quietly grabbed my trusty Sierra Pro and a tin of Crow-Magnums, and headed for the backdoor.

As I made my way onto the deck to position myself for a shot, I saw that the bushy tail gray pest was still gnawing on a nut. I opened the tin, casually pulled out a pellet, cocked and loaded the gun, took careful aim, and let loose with Hell’s furry.

A well placed neck shot was not too difficult to achieve at 12 or so yards. The squirrel dropped like a rock, and after a twitch or two later, he expired.

I let the dog out so he could smell the dead critter. Of course he went crazy, as has been the case with the others I have let him sniff. My Shih Tzu would never be mistaken for Ming Fu the ferocious hunting dog, but they little guy is becoming something of a squirrel sniffer.

The Crosman lead free pellets were a great idea, but poorly implemented due to their super low weight. Maybe I am being a little harsh, but I do not think these things are going to work well in any decently powered air rifle. I should have realized something was up by the warning on the back of the Silver Eagle Wadcutter and Hollow Point tins

FOR HUNTING ONLY.
Increased velocity and penetration.
Not for use with pellet traps.

Increased velocity decreases accuracy; at least it does in my CSP. Environment (well, at least my backyard) be damned, back to the lead.

I placed another order at Pyramyd Air and picked up four different .177 tins. Pyramyd always runs “buy 3, get 1 free” deals on their pellet tins; cheapest tin is free. I selected a variety of pellet grains to see if I could discover the perfect match for the CSP. Crosman Premier Super Match (7.9 gr), Beeman H&N Match wadcutter (8.09 gr), Beeman Crow-Magnum (8.80 gr), and Beeman Kodiak Match Extra Heavy (10.6 gr).

What a difference a pellet makes. All of the new pellets shot well, did not make nearly as much noise (as the lead-free types), and accuracy is greatly improved. It is too soon for me to tell which pellet is the best for my gun, but I like the Crosman Premier and Kodiak pellets. I can see the Crow-Magnum becoming my squirrel pellet of choice; plus the things do serious damage to an empty can of Miller Lite.

When I purchased my Crosman Sierra Pro (from now on CSP or Sierra Pro) I also picked up a tin of Crosman .177 Field Hunting Pointed pellets (7.9 gr), which worked well enough, but I got the bright idea that all that lead in my backyard was not such a good idea. I ordered some lead free pellets through Amazon (the actual vendor was Pyramyd Air).

I did not realize it at the time, but when I switched to the new pellets is when I started having issues with my gun and the scope. You can find the details of the problems by searching the blog, but the summary is that the CSP was exchanged, and I am waiting on a replacement scope to arrive from the good people at Crosman.

My CSP is fairly powerful, rated at 1000 fps, which is probably generous unless I put in some really light weight pellets. In practice the Crosman .177 Hollowpoint Lead-Free Silver Eagle pellets (4.8 gr) and the Crosman .177 Wadcutter Lead-Free Silver Eagle pellets (5.2 gr) sounded like a good choice (light weight and environmentally friendly), but the damn things were loud and not very accurate. I did not realize it right away, but if I had gone back to the lead pellets I would have quickly discovered that the light-weight pellets were going super sonic (loud booms with each fire) and where frustratingly inaccurate.

After doing a little casual air gun reading, I learned that air guns tend to favor different types of pellets. There is not a one size fits all solution; you generally have to try several different types, and see which ones shoot the best groups. Apparently most air guns also have a break-in period, which can take anywhere from 200-1000 shots before the gun settles down. Finally, and perhaps the most important point, a lighter weight pellet results in a faster, but less accurate pellet. Now we are getting somewhere!

As I wrote last night, my suitcase did not arrive with me; it was left in London.  Lucky it was tracked, found, and was on it’s way back to me (see Delays below).

Last night someone showed up at the front door at 11:30PM.  Needless to say, in this day and age, you do not open the door for any old stranger that rings your doorbell in the middle of the night.  A nice enough chap, but he did not have a uniform, identification, or anything else to identify him as the Delta luggage return person.  Besides, he did not even have my luggage with him.

My front door is mostly glass, so there is no hiding my disdain as I shake my head and tell the dude that I am not opening the door.  He asks if I am expecting a bag from Delta.  Well that is a different story.  He tells me that he is going to get my bag out of his car.  I open the door, and the house alarm starts blaring.  Damn!

By the time I sign for the bag, the phone is already ringing with the alarm company.  I gave the person the wrong password. It is late; and maybe I have had a few cold ones.  At least that is my excuse.

The police show up a couple of minutes later.  I explain to the officer what happened.  He laughs it off, relieved that it is not the opposite of a false alarm.  Meanwhile the alarm company calls my in-laws, who are the alternative contacts for us, but I honestly am not sure why they would call the backups in the middle of the night if they get the wrong alarm code.

Too much adventure for a bag return, but at least Delta did deliver.

Funny how you tend to remember stupid stuff. On my second business trip, for a long forgotten company called Still Current Design, my bag did not make it to Des Moines, Iowa. Delta delivered it to me later that day. All was right with the world.

Yesterday, on my “I forget how many business trip,” my suitcase did not arrive with me from London. Delta’s site just told me

Status: We have located your bag and it will be delivered to you within the time frame shown below
Delivery Time/Date: 11:30am–11:30pm, December 7, 2007

Hopefully it will arrive; much better to have a couple of days delay instead of being lost.

Good things come to those who wait? I forget the reason for writing this post, but I guess I am a simple man. If things end up OK, and I get my luggage tomorrow, all will be OK with the world. If not, well, Delta will just plain old suck.