It Sucks To Be Geek

This may have been titled: "No Match This Weekend: Further adventures of the XL650" . But that was insufficiently pithy.

And it goes beyond that.

You may possibly have noticed that we haven't been doing a lot of writing lately. Many reasons for that, mostly involved in the un-Geekly concept of "Having A Life".

There is a phenomenon in living which might be summed up as "Everything Breaks At The Same Time". My bathroom sink hot-water tap is shut off because the washer is eroded, but so is the screw holding the handle onto the tap and I can't get it off to replace the washer. Speaking of washers, my washing machine has decided that there is no need to actually spin during the spin cycle, so if I do laundry I have to hand-wring the contents before I pop them into the dryer ... for two or three hours until they dry out (the clothes, of course, are stiff with soap which has not been adequately removed from the material).

I can't get get a repairman in .... can't spare the full day off work to watch him earn his money. And I can't get a new washer installed, because I'm doing my annual Spring HouseCleaning and the path to the utility room through the garage is cluttered with boxes of 'stuff' which has been accumulating through-out the house during the winter months.

Oh ... and my water heater can just barely produce enough hot water for a 2-minute shower. It takes me 3 minutes to get clean. At least I can be sure that my shower will wake me up in time to get to work, except that I dread my morning shower.

To complete the litany of 'water-related' foibles, the garbage disposal unit in the kitchen sink is hors de combat, having been jammed by a penny in the whirly-gizmo unit. No, please don't ask me how the penny got there, but I am reminded of the poem about "for the want of a penny, an nail was lost, for the want of a nail a shoe was lost ..." etc.

Oh, and as I FINALLY decided to actually write something tonite, I discovered that the battery on my hotsy-totsy wireless mouse was run down. No, it's not replaceable -- it's rechargable and the recharging unit chose this day to turn itself OFF without stopping the mouse to be running all day. (My failure to put the mouse back on the charging cradle correctly may have played some small part in this Domestic Tragedy). I have barely enough charge (now that I have it charging correctly) to jump my cursor from one place to the other in this screed, so if it looks really negative, that's my excuse.

But you know what really frosts my cookie?

Two things:

First, two weeks ago the STI started acting up, and I never found a thing wrong with the gun. Doesn't matter, I don't have ammunition for it anyway.

Second, the Dillon XL650 is also devolved into a pile of metallic sludge, metaphorically speaking.

Last night and tonight I have spent two hours changing the press from the .38 Super configuration (small primers) to .10mm configuration (large primers). I found a primer had jammed UNDER the primer feed disk, which explains part of my pre-existing problems, and thought I had it fixed.

It took most of last night to find all of the parts, including the primer feed tubes for Large Primers.

Tonite I actually reassembled the press in the new configuration, only to discover that no matter WHAT I do, the Primer Feed Disk will not index all the way to align with the thingy that punches the primer into the base of the case. I have never claimed to be 'mechanical', but this goes beyond all expectations in the "Screw The Geek" category of Machinery's Little Ways To Frustrate Humans.

The funny thing is, I finally found all the XL650 parts and all of the reloading components, and still I can't reload ammunition.

So here I sit, smoking on a Marlboro and sucking down some cheap Canadian Rye Whiskey, trying to figure out how I am going to load 150+ rounds of ammunition before bed-time (approximately 1 hour away) so I can compete at the ARPC match this weekend.

[NOTE: my spell-checker on BLOGGER isn't working tonite, either. At this point, it would be disappointing if I could go for a half-hour without finding some other piece of Technology to betray me.]

In this situation, what would a Normal Man Do?

I phoned SWMBO. I told her that I was having a frustrating day, she gave me some "Poor Sweet Baby" consolation, and I'm going to eat dinner and go to sleep.

Somehow, it just doesn't matter that Technology Hates Me. SWMBO likes me, all's right with the world.

The match on Saturday? I have three students from the Introduction to USPSA class last weekend who will be competing safely to complete their certification. I told them I would be there at the end of the match to give them their certification card, and I will. I can probably do a lot of Range Officer stuff during the match, and a lot of visiting with my friends and neighbors. The shooting is only 50% of the event anyway; I go as much to mingle with the good people I've met at USPSA matches as I do to shoot.

And I'll call my landlord next week to get the faucet and the garbage disposal fixed. My landlord can also decide what he is willing to do about the water heater ... that's one of the benefits of renting instead of owning a house.

I'll shop for a new washing machine, and let the delivery guys figure out how to get it through the garage to the utility room.

I'll call DILLON and see if they can suggest how I can fix my primer feed mechanism ... or will send me a new one.

Only thing is, my car needs to go into the shop. The power door locking mechanism will unlock every door except for the driver's. I think I'll have to drop the car off at the dealer's garage, right?

Is that what you would do?

Here's the good thing: What else can go wrong?

DO NOT COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE!!!

I would rather it come as a surprise to me.