Did NOT buy a new truck today

So I was all set to buy a used 2006 Expedition. Decent shape, ok mileage, pretty much everything we wanted except it had the light duty towing package instead of the heavy one and it had leather seats :-(

This is AZ, Leather is HOT.

Anyway Dealer is asking $13K, and I know he won't come down much. I offer $14.5K out the door. Plus he has to fix the CD player and DVD player. This was actually about $150 too high. Basically I was asking him to eat his .doc fee.

He comes back with an extra thousand in "super secret" fees.

I say fine. I'll give you your asking price, just fix the broken stuff.

Sales guy says we have a deal.

Then my wife looks at the paperwork and it says they will fix the electronics and we will pay their cost. Um... NO. Oh and he also wants to charge us for the cost of tinting the windows.

So I tell the wife to give the phone to the manager. He makes a bunch of excuses. I finally say something allong the following:

Let me get this straight, I'm offering you your FULL asking price as advertised. I'm offering to pay ALL the Taxes, and your doc fee, and you want ME to pay to fix items that you advertised as present in the viehicle and working?!?!

"Well I'm already loosing money one this deal"

Too bad, we're done.

I intend to call the BBB or e-mail them on Monday.

Regardless, the folks at Certified Benz and Beamer are a bunch of crooks and weasels, don't buy from them. (In fairness, I think the sales guys are fine, its the manager who is a crook).

Edit to add: Found the BBB complaint form on-line. Look like they have 4 complaints about advertising and sales practices in the last 12-months. No wait... make that 5.

Guns Guitars and a lousy day

So I had saved up quite a bit of "fun" money. I was thinking about a new Guitar. I've been really enamored of the new BreedLove American Series guitars, and since Breedlove recently got bought out, there is a good chance that this series will be temporary.

Last night I saw that Elderly had a used on in stock for abut $250 less than new, and the deep concert size is a sweet body size.

Linkie

Alternatively I'd love to have a smaller bodied 12-string, either a Concert or OM size. I thought really hard about buying that guitar from ELderly, but in the end decided to give it a day or so because I planned to go to the fun show on Sunday.

I got up early and picked up my friend Scott. We managed to hit the show about 20 minutes after opening, so there was almost no line to get in. Decent sized show, 4 fair pavilion halls plus some tents.

Now there are only one or two things that I was really interested in: A Dan Wesson 22 Revolver, a nice .45 acp revolver, or a decent 1911 in 10mm.

Wandering the show I found a very nice 1955 Smith and Wesson .45 acp target revolver. Now, I wasn't 100% certain that the gun was not originally chambered for .45 Colt and cut down for moon clips, but I made a note of it. The fellow was asking $650 which I think was probably a pretty nice deal.

Later on I found a Colt Delta Elite at a dealers table for a bit over a grand. I laughed a little bit. Then I saw the Argentine surplus Sistema Colt he had with a price of $750 and I just shook my head.

In the same hall I saw another Delta Elite, this one priced at $850. That's not a great price, but it's certainly a fair one. I grabed the guys card and made a note of the price.

A bit later I saw another Delta Elite, this one priced at $800. Better yet this was a private sale so no paperwork and no sales tax. Made another note.

After we ate we were getting about ready to leave. I kept thinking about the Delta. I went back to look at it and the guy offered to let me have it for $750, the exact same price as that Breedlove I was thinking abut.

I've wanted a 10mm for a long time. I'm looking it over and it looks ok. The barrel has been swapped out for a match style barrel but again that is ok.

This is the Delta Elite:

I was feeling a touch of buyer's remorse because I really do prefer a GI guiderod and bushing, but the price was good enough that I was willing to overlook that.

I take it apart and clean and lube it at Scott's place. Looks clean inside, not abused at all.
I get it home and go to load it and the cartridges won't go into battery.

What the...?

Take it apart again. Drop a cartridge into the chamber. Wont go in. Think about it. I grab a 40 S&W cartridge. Perfect fit.

Arrrgg.

Some idiot, and probably the guy before the guy I bought it from, converted a Colt Delta Elite, one of the finest combat handguns in existence, from the mighty 10mm to the .40 S&W. Most likely this was to shoot IDPA or IPSC where a 40 could give you a slight advantage over a .45 or 10mm. (1 more round than the 45 and softer recoil than the 40)

I suppose it could make a nifty pin gun as well. (Pin Gun = gun for shooting bowling pins off of a table). It is NOT however a ten mike mike. I wanted a ten mike mike.

Arrrgh.

I'm extremely frustrated right now. I've already listed it on our local gun board (with a completely honest listing) and will be happy if I can get out of it what I paid. Otherwise I can fix this. It will probably cost about $200 in new and used parts but it is recoverable.

I'm still pissed though.

Trees

One of the orange trees that was dieing finally got to the point where we ripped it out last weekend. I let the kids play in the hole for a week then went tree shopping.

Since we have 19, count them 19 orange trees left I thought we ought to put in something different so I went on the hunt for a Grapefruit tree.

I went to 4 nurseries before I finally found a Red Grapefruit tree at Lowes.

Special plug to SummerWinds Nursery though:
http://www.summerwindsaz.com/

They had a huge selection of fruit trees, including pluots, low chill nectarines and peaches, as well as the new low chill cherry trees. They also had several multiple budded plum trees, some as many as 5 on one tree.

Guess what followed me home...

FEED Review

4 out of 5

FEED has been sitting in my backpack for several months in the virtual "I really need to get around to reading this" pile. I'm glad I did. It's quite well done.

FEED starts out somewhat slow, but that is to be expected for the first novel set in a new universe. It does after all take some time to get the reader up to speed on the way things work 20 years after "Rising Day". Once fleshed out though, the book becomes a fairly fast paced romp.

Several of the negative reviews on Amazon have centered on the fact that the book is not really about fighting zombies. True. The zombies are mostly background material, they are the reason for the story, not the focus. One might as well complain that they were mislead because they thought that Huckleberry Finn was going to be about the river.

Primarily the book is about the rise of new media over the old in the post-zombie-apocalypse. Those complaining that it was more about blogging than zombies should take note of the giant RSS feed symbol on the cover.

It's about living in the post zombie rising world, not about the zombies. Says so right on the cover: Good news: we survived; Bad News: So did they. Seriously Hello People, pay attention here.

McGuire does an excellent job of world building and of characterization. She does fall short a bit in the plotting department, as the bad guys are way too obvious, and I thought she telegraphed the ending pretty early. A little better plotting would have earned this 5 stars.

Spoiler Alert: I knew Seanan was going to go with the Podkayne of Mars ending by page 3 or 4. Now other than Heinlein, I can't think of anyone else who has used that ending, so most readers might not be expecting it. And of course I mean the original ending to Pody, not the sanitized one the publisher forced on Heinlein.

The odd thing is, I've known Seanan since high school, so when her characters go into expository mode they speak in Seanan's voice. It's a particular voice unique to Seanan. Using a pseudonymn is silly. The book is written in Seanan's voice, style, and particular sense of humor; there is no point in pretending otherwise, even if Mira Grant is an open pseudonym.

And don't worry, there are enough zombies to go around.

QOTW

Over on The Gun Counter Chris Byrne made the following comment:

When you have a choice, you should choose not to support evil.

We were talking about specifically about DeBeers, but it works on any level you want it to.

Up to Four with Wyoming

Wyoming just became the fourth state to join the constitutional carry bandwaggon.

Gov. Mead signed the bill today, and the new law goes into effect in July. Arizona welcomes Wyoming to the club.

Article

Dancing skyclad befor the alter of Free Trade

So my anarcho-capatalist Libertarian friends continue to prance nekkid before the holy alter of Free Trade, see HERE

And yes, they are correct in that tariffs stifle growth, and economic growth (in the end) trumps all. Of course, corporate taxes also stifle growth, as do consumption taxes, construction taxes...

I still maintain that if you are going to tax, it's far better to do it on imports than on corporate profits. Tax corporations too highly and they just move offshore, tax imports to highly and people might pay more, but they start making stuff here.

Now maybe, just maybe, my friends are taking the long view. After all, if you pursue unrestrained "free" trade with China, eventually you have no jobs left, and thus no taxpayers. That's a rather long term method of starving the beast, and it's awfully rough going, but I suppose it would work out in the end.

Competition wise, it's not the wage difference either, it's China's refusal to float their currency, and the stifling regulations we have here. OSHA, EPA, Sarbanes-Oxley etc. are not designed to destroy American industry, that's just a "beneficial side effect". In fact, pretty much anything a government does is BAD for the economy, bad for growth, and bad for jobs.

Regardless, I did my part to support international trade this afternoon:
I needed some stakes to stake my trees, so I bought some steel T posts at Lowe's. They were lousy quality, but it was all they had, and of course they were made in China.

I also needed a new lamp for my bedroom (also made in China)

I also found some lightbulbs (China again) but I put them back and found some different bulbs made in the U.S.A. (sorry guys)

As an aside, how did that happen? I thought these days we just sat around in a circle and sold each other financial products.

Anyway, for those who actually WANT to buy stuff made here, Sylvania still makes light-bulbs in Pennsylvania., so shop accordingly.

The Rising

Leprecon is May 6th through the 8th.

Seanan will be our Music Guest of Honor. Because Seanan is our guest, I have been tasked with writing at least 2 zombie themed songs before the con.

BRAAAANZ.