My glorious return to public life… Or… Whatever

Whoops, fell away from society again. I do that from time to time. It’s kind of nice to know that I could completely disappear and not many people would notice… I guess… Eh Whatever. Life is only what you’re going to make of it.

So what have I been up to recently you ask? Well you didn’t ask but I’m going to tell you about it anyways because you know what that’s what I’m here for and that is what I do… So get used to it you little bugger.

Let’s start about at the beginning of March, since that’s when this social desertion started. On March 4th, I said screw Facebook and twitter. If you wanted to hear from me, you’d have to find some other means of doing it. I deleted my twitter and locked down my Facebook account so that I could not log on to it. I had all the emails from facebook go to an email address I never used and I changed the email password to that email account just so I could essentially bar myself from it. Why didn’t I delete it? Because the few people I told I was going to do this bet I couldn’t last. So I left it up there so they could have a date as to my last post. The Twitter, no one cared about and I was just being followed by some pretentious asshats that looked to shoot me down on anything I said that didn’t meet their extreme leftist agenda. I’LL STOP AT THAT ON THIS THANK YOU VERY MUCH. [It was annoying damnit]

On March 7th, my company took us curling as sort of a bonding experience. I took two pictures of that as there was going to be a video that never surfaced. (I will hopefully find it because I believe it was quite hilarious.)

The lanes

The Stones

The place we went to was called Broomstones Curling Club in Wayland, Massachusetts. I highly recommend that if you’ve never tried it, to at least give it a shot. It was surprisingly fun, especially if you go in a group because if you make a fool of yourself, so what everyone else will too. We were taught all the basics from launching a stone, to sweeping and then finally strategy of the game. Once we had all the fundamentals down, we played two quick games with two ends. My team won both games which was a lot of fun.

On March 13th, My dad and I took my girlfriend Becky to the range for her first time. She said she wanted to learn about guns and we had a new .22LR to break in (The Sig Sauer Mosquito). I actually posted a short post about that below, so I won’t talk about this further.

Then nothing really awesome happened for a couple weeks. Busy with work, started doing Let’s Plays on a second YouTube channel (which you can view here if you want.)

On April 6th, I got to see my best friend graduate from the Connecticut Police Academy. It was definitely a pretty awesome ceremony and one I won’t forget. I’m truly proud of him because he is doing something he completely set his mind to. I don’t have any pictures of this because well, I gave them all to him and he hasn’t sent me any copies.

On April 10th, I went to Gillette Stadium just for fun with my family and girlfriend because they wanted to go to Bass Pro Shops. We had heard that it was very similar to Cabela’s and we were looking for a couple things. It’s a really cool place to go to but yea… it didn’t have anything we were looking for.

Gun Updates:
I’m just going to tackle this now and finish up this rather long post. My dad has purchased 3 rifles in the past couple weeks. The first one is a Century Arms CETME, The Second is a Saigar AK something (I have not seen this, he’s only told me about it on the phone), and the third is an M&P15-22 to replace the one I never got from Riverview Guns in CT. I am planning on doing some reviews, or at least getting started on the reviews of each of the firearms soon. Or at least more range videos…

Smith and Wesson M&P15-22 Debacle

On March 12th, I went down to Riverview Guns in East Windsor, CT to purchase a M&P15-22 rifle. I drove there because I knew they had them in stock and I also knew that they had a truly reasonable price (399 dollars, which is pretty cheap). I filled out all the paperwork and they wrote down the details of the gun, and did all the necessary stuff to start my two week waiting period including put down a deposit on the gun (420 dollars worth of a deposit).

They said that I could come in on Saturday, March 26th, and pick up the gun. I called that day to verify that it was okay for me to come down and they said it was. So, I went down to the store to pick up the rifle, and was ready to go to the range that day. I got there, explained to one of the guys at the counter that I was there to pick up a gun off the two week wait and he goes to look for it. 15 minutes later I see him up at the counter talking to one of his coworkers, kind of frantically, and tosses my paperwork onto the rack of guns behind the counter. His coworker picks up the paperwork, looks through it and then goes off. About another 15 minutes later, the second coworker comes up to me and tells me that they do not have my gun in the store because they were recalled. This didn’t sit well with me because of how the first guy acted, so I questioned if Smith and Wesson truly recalled it or if the gun was sold to someone else. He reassured me that he had a contact at Smith and Wesson that could verify that the gun was in fact recalled and that he was sorry that I would not be able to pick it up that day.

This still didn’t sit well with me but I gave him my contact information and he reassured me that he was going to call me as soon as the rifle came in for me to go pick it up. As I was driving back to Massachusetts, I called the Smith and Wesson Shooting Center and asked them if they had heard of any M&P15-22′s being recalled. The explained to me that they had not heard of any recalls and gave me a number to call to find out the latest information. When I rang that number it went straight to voicemail saying that if I wanted to speak with an associate, I would have to call back during the week. That Monday morning (March 28th), I called Smith and Wesson customer service who again stated that they had not recalled the M&P15-22′s. This made me a bit furious with the dealer because it just proved that they outright lied to me. But I decided that since I was over 90 miles away, that I was going to give them till my next trip to Western, MA. I patiently waited a couple days after the time frame they gave me, still no call. I asked my dad to call our favorite dealer to ask if she had one. She explained to me that they were having a hard time keeping a stock of them because they were selling very quickly. I started to consider the last option I wanted to think about. This was the idea of going down to the store and cancelling my order altogether. I felt like I was being lied to and dragged around in the mud like a chump.

On Thursday, April 7th, 2011, I went down to the gun store, which was Riverview Guns in East Windsor and asked them if they had the gun come in. They said no, and I promptly asked for my money back. The owner came over said fine and gave me my money back. I was fine with this, and that there were no hard feelings (I think we both knew that I knew he was BSing me about the recall and he just sold the gun to someone else.) What I didn’t appreciate was the fact that one of their workers came up to my father and I and said that they couldn’t sell Rifles to people from Massachusetts anymore, because they apparently sold one to someone who didn’t have an LTC in Massachusetts.

But I know the laws of CT and Massachusetts as my father and I regularly deal with CT dealers, I could see that this was a blatant lie because the Massachusetts doesn’t know that I have the rifle until I register it in Massachusetts. It is not illegal for me to possess a rifle as an out of state resident as long as I have my driver’s license. All I had to do was promptly register it with the state within 7 days of bringing it in. The entire ordeal left me with a bad taste in my mouth towards that shop. My dad says that he is going to continue dealing with them, not for gun purchases but for magazines and stuff of that nature. I personally will not be giving them a penny of my money. There are far too many dealers in the world to deal with ones that treat you poorly and lie directly to your face.

My Generation is not full of Spoiled Brats.

After reading an article on MSNBC, I feel like this is an important topic. Do the kids that were born in 80′s and early 90′s that are graduating into this economy have it harder than previous generations.  Pretty much a lot of people were saying no because they have been spoiled and expect everything.

Well I want to present the flipside of the coin. Because honestly, every news article talks about a guy who went to some private school, who is having trouble finding a job and all that. Even the Boston Globe reported on a dude who WAS getting jobs but turning them down because he felt they didn’t really suit them.

I’m a recent graduate. I paid for college entirely on my own through loans and the scholarships I’ve earned. I worked throughout college to buy my car, pay for food and everything that I needed. My parents helped me as much as they could but really I didn’t want their help. I feel it made me a better person to achieve something I wanted, and it made it even better because the only person I had to answer to was myself.

It made me frustrated to see my fellow classmates, even some of my friends who got college paid for by their parents just think of it as a game. They didn’t care about classes, they drank themselves to oblivion on weeknights and slept in till noon the next day. Even worse was when people got a free ride to college because their family didn’t make enough money and they chose to pass on the opportunity to make themselves better, to study something they loved and just goofed off until they got the diplomia.

When I started looking for jobs, I started applying anywhere in my field, anywhere across the country. I posted my resume on Monster.com and checked back several times a month to find new jobs for each of those companies. I was never expecting any handouts. I wasn’t expecting companies to come running to me because I had a diplomia. Most of my friends were. Some of my friends felt that  going to grad school was the most important thing to do right now since they believe the economy is so bad. I on the other hand wanted to work for a bit and figure out what I wanted to get my Masters in. I do plan on going back to school to get a masters, and hopefully learn a couple languages in the process but I wanted to start my life.

I’ll admit I was extremely lucky to be contacted by a recruiter that was hired by my company to find kids out of college to interview for a position I had. As soon as I found out about my company I did tons of research into the products they were delievering.

I’m just getting sick and tired of people assuming that everyone in my generation is spoiled and doesn’t want to work. I know they truly don’t but the way they word their arguements make it seem like they do and it bugs me. It’s like me saying that everyone in the baby boomer generation fucked up the world too much for my generation to fix.

Anyways short rant over. I’m going to go back to my regularly scheduled writings once I finish the next post.