Too Lazy to Fail

…especially an unexpected dull evening, with the Emergency Party Button.

A gentle reminder to readers that the postage rate has increased, effective today.

New Letter Rate: 42 cents
New Postcard Rate: 27 cents

Boy, it sure is a good thing that the post office doesn’t operate under a statutory monopoly or anything. It would sure stink if, for instance, they’d mandated that nobody can put anything into a box you place on your property except for a single organization. Man, it’d be REALLY odious if nobody could do urgent letter delivery without being required, by law, to charge at least twice as much as the federal monopoly. Good thing we live in a free capitalistic society!

The increase doesn’t affect most of us personally to any great degree. I pay only one bill every month by mail, the rest of them having long since allowed online payment. Where it stinks is at my job with the church, where besides the occasional congregation-wide letter, we send probably 20 to 30 envelope’s worth of routine correspondence every week. Most of these are bills that could not be easily tracked if not done as a formal paper check.

Postal service here in Jackson is a joke, too. Letters from one part of town to another may only take one day, or may take five. Checks that the church mails to vendors routinely take a week to arrive, with 20+ day deliveries not uncommon. More than a few times I have driven by a blue mail drop to find it packed to overflowing and driven back the next morning, to find it still absolutely full. I’m convinced that I have witnessed a mailbox go unemptied for three days. Church policy prohibits me from dropping mail (which is often financially sensitive) in the on-property mailbox, so I get to either deal with unreliable mail drop boxes, or make my way over to the post office every day.

Interesting fact: The USA is the only country on the face of the planet which enforces a monopoly on letter delivery at gunpoint.

Previously, on Too Lazy to Fail…

This is a new Ruger 10/22 rifle after about 70 rounds of bulk-pack ammunition.

Looks like the ejected brass wore off the paint on the receiver.

Ruger sent me a UPS sticker, and I shipped the receiver and trigger assembly back to them. What I received back was not right:

They didn’t bother to remove the screws before painting.

The finish is very thick and bubbly. The extra-soft rounded corners are visible here:

As you can see, the new finish is so thick that it almost obscures the lettering on the receiver. I actually had trouble seeing the serial number well enough to read it to the lady on the phone.

The worst part of it is that they didn’t bother to protect the barrel hole from their work, so that when I put the normally-freely-insertable barrel in there, I had to squeeze it in and now it’s stuck about 5 degrees off center.

I sat on the ruined rifle for a couple of weeks, because it made me sick every time I thought about dealing with it. All I want is my money back for a new rifle, not for Ruger to screw it up more. It’ll never be “right” again, so I’d rather just start over.

So I called today and spoke to a very sympathetic lady in service. She said that they will be happy to “make it right” but that she’ll have to call me Monday. Apparently they don’t send out UPS stickers anymore, but rather have some sort of arrangement with UPS stores for drop-off, and her manager (the only one who knows the new system) has already gone home, it being 3:00 on a Friday and all.

Updates when I know more.

There is no state in the Union for which the answers to the questions couldn’t be supplied by a marginally interested third grade student who didn’t take notes.

Thing is, you already know the answers to the questions that will REALLY influence the outcome of your permit application:

• Are you wealthy enough to be a campaign donor to a major state or city politician? [Yes] [No]
• Are you a celebrity, ranking “B List” or above? [Yes] [No]
• Are you related to anyone in management at your sheriff’s office? [Yes] [No]
• Out of the people in this room, are you the only one professional enough? [Yes] [*BANG*]

By the way, you’re a bad person for wanting to cheat, even if nobody should have to take a test to carry a gun in the first place.

I’ve spent about half an hour on missions, and about two and a half hours doing freeplay with old college buddies on Xbox Live.

The missions in Vice City drove me crazy. They were cludgy and it seemed way too easy to fail them for silly reasons. Also, many of them counted on getting out of your car and engaging enemies on foot. With the cludgy combat system, the missions drove me batty. GTA IV seems to have improved, and I think I’ll have a much better time in single player.

Multiplayer is absolutely fantastic, especially if you have friends to play with. The only thing I miss about World of Warcraft is the ability to play with friends while talking to them in realtime. When your avatars on the screen are “together” in a virtual world, and you’ve got voice comms, it’s just about as close as you can get to being in the same room.