06-05-23: it's a cool rainy day in rockingham county, not only does rain yield life-sustaining water, but it keeps the noisy-ass motorcycles off the street too, pretty quiet on main street today... i got my shower in before fed-ex comes, i don't smell like an onion field anymore... it would be pretty sweet to work on the 458 upper today, but the inaccurate tracking information has been teasing me for two days now, so i'm not holding the breathe... i've got four upper receivers in different calibers at different stages of completion, the parts that fed-ex has will pretty much finish the 458 build, it's got a muzzle device, barrel, adjustable gas block and tube, complete BCG, and a stronger than typical buffer spring, pretty good kit for that particular cartridge, the sale made it hard to refuse... i really wanted to wait until they did another run of the 14.5 inch barrels to get one of their kits, but the 150-dollars off sale was enticing enough to go with the 16-inch barrel and kit... 458 socom is one of those cartridges that doesn't require a long barrel to be efficient, the longer one's help with velocity a bit, but the shorter barrels save a considerable amount of weight, so i'd prefer to go with the weight-saving barrel, and pay the money to have the muzzle-device pinned and welded to make it a legit 16-incher (16.5 in this case), but that is irrelevant at this point, because an actual full 16 inch barrel should be here within a few hours, along with the rest of it's traveling companions, now all i have to do is screw the muzzle device on, not get it drilled, pinned, and welded... it's all getting paired-up with an aero precision XL upper receiver, and their 15-inch enhanced hand-guards v2... maybe the father's day fairy will bring me an eotech to finish it off... wilson combat recommends using the lancer magazines with these rounds, probably don't really
need them, but i have some already, and i'm going to end-up ordering some 10 and 20 round mags to go with the few 30s that are in the safe... OK, here's where things get weird in a hurry... your typical 30-round ar-15 magazine will only hold
NINE 458socom rounds, that's right,
they may hold thirty of the 223 or 556 rounds, but not the big-bore 458, just nine of them... the rounds are about as thick as my chubby italian index fingers... suddenly, my '30-round magazines' aren't so called 'high capacity' anymore, now they are only 9 round magazines, weird how that works, so they are perfectly legal in all fifty states, right, NH doesn't make a fuss over silly things like magazine capacity, so it's not an issue for me anyhow...
i've found some 458 dedicated mag-followers online, too, but i'm not spending 12 bucks just for one of them, they are aluminum, not just plastic, but i'm too cheap to pay 12 bucks each... 458s is a very impressive round, you could ethically harvest bear and moose with that cartridge, it's got that much oompf, it's a serious hog-bullet for the folks that deal with invasive feral hogs, too... it's also an upper receiver that i'll end up getting a can for, someday--you can get some very heavy sub-sonic rounds (or load them yourself), it'll make it more fun to shoot with a suppressor... hold on, here,
scroll down this article a bit for a visual of the size different between 5.56 nato vs. 458 socom... now where is fed-ex, i've got a barrel wrench in-hand, and i'm itching to get started ;-) -- ct
06-05-23 later: the fed-ex driver is a lazy ass, the van parked in front of the neighbor's driveway that's literally right across the street--a 30-mph two lane street, and it was just as i walked into the living room, so i see it pull up, and i'm happy... he (i think) looks directly at our house, so i go over and open the front door to greet them since a signature is required, i can see that he or she is leaned down like they are looking at their phone, and a minute later they drove off... i'm thinking 'that must not have been my delivery, it must have just be a different fed-ex driver that had to pull over for a minute', that's cool, i've been waiting since yesterday, i can wait a bit longer... a couple-two-three hours later i get an email stating that a delivery attempt was made at 11:40... bull-fvcking-shit, the dude that parked across the street didn't even attempt to open their door, never mind deliver anything... the fact that a signature was required is the reason that i stayed home yesterday, because their tracking system lied when it said it was on time to be delivered yesterday between 10:30 - 2:30, it never came, in fact it never made it outside of CT until 9:pm... so between yesterday's tracking issues, and today's lazy-ass driver who lied on the stop-notes i had to call... the original customer service rep was nice, but not helpful to a satisfactory level, his manager was very good at her job though, she 'got it', and she was understanding enough to get my blood-pressure back down to the safe zone by the end of our call... don't tell me you 'made an attempt' when you didn't get your ass out of your seat... i don't fault fed-ex, just that one particular driver, wonder what his or her issue was, is this something they do often or were they having some weird/bad/shit sort of day... anyways, i've got too many things on the calendar for tomorrow, chances are remote that anyone will be here to sign for it... stupid fed-ex driver, i fart in your general direction, you got my blood-pressure up with your blatant lie, you were right fvcking in front of the house, you got yourself here, so how do you not finish the easy part, dude... they last few fed-ex drivers that came by were decent friendly folks, the hippy-looking dude, and the gal with the swath of purple/blue hair coloring, just not sure what's up with this one. -- ct
06-05-23 laterer: you know what, i got a phone call from a number with an OK area-code claiming to be from US Customs and Borders, stating that they have intercepted a... and then the call ended... i tried to call the number back within a few seconds, and got a message stating that the number i'm trying to reach isn't in service... that call, in combination with the fed-ex fail, well, OK, seems like someone is fvcking with me, i can stand my share of harassment/attention--before i go beast-mode--let's just see where this goes, and how i will respond :-) -- ct
06-05-23 more laterer: hope i didn't overdo it, went shopping for some heavy things we needed... i might be paying the price later, heavy-ass bags of sand, jugs of water, and propane tank... the nice lady at home depot asked if i'd like assistance loading stuff into the car, i'm an egotistical idiot for not accepting the offer, i'm just so used to being the person helping other folks, it seems really weird to require it myself... what an idiot. -- ct
06-05-23 later then before: thinking more about the phoney call from 'US Customs and Borders' that 'intercepted a...', i've actually had something addressed to me that was 'intercepted' by 'feds', and they don't just make some haphazard phone call, those suckers took the canna-seeds that were being sent from canada back in the days when i kept a closet grow (a 26 x 30 inch closet), once i realized that canna helped with certain conditions/symptoms, and furthermore identified certain strains of canna that offered little negative effects and decent (but not perfect) positive effects, i decided to cut out the middle-men and unknown safety protocols, and decided to buy the seeds, and make sure that the growing, harvesting, drying, curing is all done the right way, who wants to consume canna that was smuggled via the crotch of someone's underwear, or harvested from a farm that uses nasty fertilizers and insecticides... so anyways, that's when i learned about growing things, and produced the medicine that helped me get off of prescribed pain-killers and psycho-pharma molecules... i don't seem to require any of those things anymore, so kudos to 'mother nature' for providing naturally occurring cannabinoids to help with difficulties concentrating on priorities (ADD is one of my nasty ailments), and the anti-inflamatory properties of some of the cannabinoids found in cannabis-indica, cannabis-sativa, and cannabis-rudelis... hemp has some solid cannabinoids as well, it's typically rich with cbd-a...
... so the point of incriminating myself in regards to rowing a plant in my closet that i consumed myself (and shared some with some adult friends), the point of this story is to say that the feds don't call you to tell you that they confiscated a package addressed to you, they sent the package to me, but kept the weed-seeds, and left me a note telling me that they did so, that's how it worked... i really don't think those folks are concerned with a grown-ass man growing a plant or two in a closet because it helps with some of their symptoms, and they aren't selling it,,, i really don't think those feds are overly concerned with that scenario, so they did whatever they did to those seeds, and sent me a 'we caught you' note in their place, that's fine, you got me, cost me about a hundred bucks (i think i ordered three different strains), i ended up sourcing them elsewhere after the second failed attempt from that distributor... here's the silly thing, after entirely too much reading regarding the therapeutic effects of canna, i've come to learn that a ratio of 20-parts CBD to 1-part THC is the ideal ratio for my particular conditions, it's so weak that the plants which naturally produce those ratios is technically considered 'hemp', and not a controlled/banned plant, so when we move to another state that allows adult-use canna-freedom i'll probably order some of the 20:1 seeds from a better source than the one that the feds 'intercepted'... don't go telling me that you are from customers/borders hang-up fifteen seconds into the call, it doesn't work that way, i haven't ordered anything outside of the USA in years, and i don't require canna anymore, but it sure helped while getting off of the pain-pills and psych-pills that i no longer required... those sorts of prescriptions may help for a season or two, but not over a decade, it's not safe... you need to quit applying band-aids, and deal with the root-problem, contrary to ignorant and popular belief, canna helped me identify root-problems, go figure... silly-ass fool calling to tell me he's from the border patrol and they intercepted something addressed to me, get off of me with that bull-shit, that's not how the feds work, mate... there is a new creative scam every day. -- ct