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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (348890)	8/28/2007 10:21:24 PM
From: d[-_-]b	Respond to of 1573952

A lot of people think I'm nuts for playing golf every week in 90 degree weather. Here in Washington it gets a little to nasty to play golf all year - so like most people I have seasonal hobbies. Fishing, golfing, hunting and working on my antique outboard motors when it gets real cold. Why do you like guns so much? They're interesting in design, being a software guy, mechanical things interest me since the last thing I want to do is come home from work and play with computers. They also represent history and holding pieces of history makes that connection with the past tangible. It's quite an eye opener to actually fire weapons you see portrayed rather stupidly in movies versus in real life. Just last week I was playing with a .44cal cap and ball black powder 1858 Remington and three of the five remaining cylinders caps fell off on the first shot. Apparently I didn't pinch them down hard enough to keep them in place during recoil. Then I found a spent cap jammed the cylinder on the next shot - that's why they made long exaggerated motions above their heads in the old days while cocking the hammer for the next shot - to hopefully have the spent cap fall out of the action. After finally getting off six shots the darn thing was nearly impossible to open so I could reload - powder fouling gummed it up real good. When I finally got the thing open, it took me nearly 10 minutes to reload all cylinders and I start thinking how many times I've seen movies of guys taking cover and reloading in seconds -yeah right. You either need a spare cylinder ready to go or start running. Then of course there's the bargain hunter aspect of finding a rare gun in an estate/garage sale and picking it up on the cheap. Once I found a Winchester model 61 .22 magnum in a pawn shop for $350, they sell for well over $950 at gun shows and gun auction web sites. Some folks that inherit guns that have sat around their houses all of the sudden just want them out of the house at any price and neglect to consider they're dumping something incredibly rare. Friends that own gun shops have lots of stories about little old ladies bringing in their long dead husbands old colt revolver wanting $500 to be told the gun is worth over $25,000 and should take it to an auction house. How their attitude changes in a hurry about that evil gun that was sitting in a box for decades doing nothing, hurting no one. I knew a woman who collected Owls (porcelain, etc), never could figure out why. :-)