Russian sniper rifle pr0n

The Ruskies have some interesting ranged weapons; for instance, I did not know that there was a bullpup full-auto Dragunov. Neat-oh!

While I'm sure that these guys can shoot and kick ass like other well trained snipers, I just can't get over the ridiculous spray painted 80's motorcycle helmets. Cool guns though.

Bolt action gun pr0n

How about a home brewed .458 SOCOM on a Savage action!?!?

Now that is cooooool!!

A lame duck in denial

"There seems to be some denial about what's contributing to the crime and violence in our community. . ."

You got that right, Mrs. Bland.

Hey, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and assaults county employees for starting a meeting without master. . . . .oh, wait.

And, apparently, what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. Hmmm.

I'm alive

Had a four day weekend with Thanksgiving and all. My wife worked two of those days, so I went full loser and maintained pajama posture while hanging out with the kids, playing video games, and not shaving. There was also a birthday party in there too, which was interesting in that cramming a dozen kids and twenty+ adults in such a small house makes for some good times.

There were no accomplishments to speak of, with perhaps the acception of the loading of 100 rounds of .380 acp, as well as some .308 to refine my RL15 loads for another test. Now I just need time to shoot them. One of the bigger problems that I have found is that when you load up some new rounds for a test, and don't shoot them immediately, you start to second guess your work. That can be bad.

Other than that, the world still turns and the Republic lives on. More to follow when I get it.

Subtle hints

I stumbled upon this this morning, and thought I'd share it. Can you tell me what's wrong with this picture?



Diabetes I'm sure doesn't sound like much fun, so why the warning about it right next to the heaping pile of butter slathered pancakes being soaked in sugery syrup? FREE PANCAKES DAY!!

I'm totally going to IHOP for lunch.

Disregarding Rule #4

Either this guy owns 5,000 acres of uninhabited land, or he's a moron. Don't fire rifles up into the air! Rule #4!!

Thinking about it, even if you owned enough land to know that your rounds wouldn't be impacting in a school yard four miles away, you simply can't guarantee where your rounds are going to land. Bad juju.

Adorable marksmanship

Starting safety and marksmanship early on makes for good habits. It's cute too!

And for the ladies, it's important that the weapon matches the outfit!

Going the distance

Yesterday was a watershed moment for me in that I maxed out my little AR15 at distance. We were shooting out at 710 yards, and my 69 grain Varget handloads were punching outstanding groups as they were de-stabilizing. My AR only has a 16" barrel like many on the market today, so my average velocity is 2,582 fps which JBM Ballistics tells me my loads will run out of gas at 700 yards. I was not zeroed for any of the loads that I shot, as I was just testing groups. The group above the bull marked "223":



I'm tickled pink with that for several reasons: for one, I know exactly what the limits are for my gun; and two, despite the 69 grain bullets starting to keyhole as they hit the target, I'm still getting 4" or less vertical dispersion, which is awesome; and three, I now know that there's no point in going for another .223 chambering for the MK11 Mod 0 build that I was planning as I would only pick up another hundred yards capability. Looks like I'll be checking out 6.5 Grendel again!

This little AR with its 2-7 Burris FFII Tactical scope and lite barrel shoots circles around my custom built, Krieger barreled 308 with 3-12X50mm scope. Weird.



The little group was fired at the black dot, and I hadn't adjusted my dope from my first group. The large group was also fired with the same dope, but into a 8mph wind while chasing the yellow balloon around. It was getting dark, and everyone was packing up, so I figured what the hell. Almost all of the shot holes are slightly elongated from the rounds not hitting square. It's really cool though because they were not hitting completely sideways yet, so they were in the process of going transonic. Some of them hit straight on too, which have to be the ones that left the barrel with a little more speed.

I brought my reloading press and all associated gear to find a Varget load for my 308, and it ended badly. I again, for reasons I can't recall, I decided to shoot off of the Harris bi-pods for an OCW test, and again found out the hard lesson that bi-pods bounce like shit on any surface, at least for me. I do think that it's shooter induced error, but I've tried every trick in the book and it still happens: putting a towel under the bi-pod feet; digging a little trench in the dirt for the feet to push into; loading the bi-pod with various tention; watched the Sniper's Hide video on how to shoot off bi-pods without bounce; none of this helped. I then did myself the greatest favor by removing those pieces of shit and slinging them down as far into the woods as I possibly could. I will never ruin another load development effort because of bi-pods again.

For fun, I brought along a box of 175 grain Federal Gold Medal Match to see how it shoots from my gun at distance. The wind was slightly breezy, between 2-5 mph, and I didn't use a wind call:



The vertical dispersion is about 2 1/2", which makes me happy. The horizontal spread I blame on the wind. Mirage was also really bad when we first started shooting. My plans at this point are to stop wasting valuable long range time by testing loads, so I'm going to have to get sorted out close to home and decide on a load. My Reloder-17 OCW test a few days ago went alright, but I didn't find a load that I wanted to use; and without any data for the powder, I'm scared to go any higher. I also didn't get the velocity I was hoping for with 175 grain bullets until I was at almost 49 grains of the stuff, which is a lot of powder.

Either way, I'm glad to have success with the AR knowing that it's minute-of-groundhog at over 700 yards. You can't ask for more of a 16" factory barrel.

Honor, Courage, Commitment

Somehow I missed these photos on Veteran's Day. Quite moving, but not as moving as the stories on this page dedicated to Marine Corps Major Megan McClung; if the picture of the running shoes with the note by her headstone doesn't suck the air out of your lungs, you're not human.

Semper Fi, Marine!

More contept for government not giving young gangsters a long enough vacation

Longest title in this blog, I know, but I found another article from the same author at the Washington Times as the one I blogged about a couple of days ago.

In this article, both the shooter and the shootee were proud "active" members of DC's Youth Rehabilitation Services, and it's apparent from the author that DYRS did not send thems two keeeiiids away to someplace exotic for a long enough period of time. If only Mr. Kearney had been sent to purgatory in Carlsbad to sip margaritas and think about how eluding and assaulting police officers is frowned upon in today's society, maybe he would not have shot another human being to death over something so petty as a bag of meth, or whatever the dispute was.

Do note that twice Kearney was sentenced for some crime amongst a stack of crimes, and that had he actually served the time he was supposed to, he could not have possibly killed Wilson as he would have been behind bars. So really, what is the failure point here? These guys were both allowed to walk the streets on their own free will as long as they reported occasionally to DYRS, instead of serving the time that they were sentenced to. Hmmmm.

It's obvious to me that the solution to young people who repetitively demonstrate dangerous criminal behavior is not to stroke their feelings and give them a pompous vacation, but to place them in a facility that separates them from the people who are not lunatics. This facility should have high walls and fences, topped with concertina wire and towers filled with men with rifles.

It's a revelation, I tell ya! You heard it here first!

A river ran through it

Almost five years ago, a good friend of mine was out canoeing in the river when the water was up pretty high from two weeks of rain. The trip ended in disaster as he and a friend almost lost their lives, destroyed the canoe, and lost all of their gear except for the cooler. Among some of the gear lost was a Ruger P9, which my friend promptly reported to the local Sheriff's office. Well, some good ol' local yokel found that pistol and turned it in to the Sheriff, who called my buddy and returned it to him.

The finish may not impress you, but it still seems to function just fine:



He hasn't fired it yet, and has said that he has no desire to, but he did give it a thorough cleaning. I didn't get a pic of the internals, but they seemed fine as well. The blued magazine was pretty rusted, but didn't look as bad as I would have thought after spending four and a half years submerged in the mud on the bottom of the Rappahanock.

I have had a good experience in the past with Ruger's customer service, so I suggested that he send it to them for some OEM TLC, and just maybe that gun might be something again. It definitely needs a new slide, but after handling it I have no doubts that if I stuck a loaded magazine in it it would fire as you see it. That's after a bunch of WD-40; nothing more.

Over all, I'd say that this was a serious torture test that speaks to the quality of Ruger. I have no dog in that fight, as I do not own any Ruger products, although I've had good luck with them in the past.

Ruger tuff!!!

The blame game

"Department puts teens at risk on D.C. mean streets"

Uuuuhm, no. That is the subtitle to this article in the Washington Times on how screwed up teens and young adults buy/sell/do drugs and murder one another. I'm sorry, but you cannot blame government for the actions of crazy people.

That agency, despite all its problems, did all that it could to show this man - 19 year old individual: man - that there was life outside of DC ghettos, and sent him to a wonderful neighborhood out of state for two frickin' years to figure himself out. I don't see the connection here on how a DC government agency is destroying lives; if you are 19 years old, you are responsible for getting a hold of yourself and making your way through life without selling crack and ambushing armed drug dealers in seedy alleys.

Yeah, government agencies countrywide are not known as being bastions of efficiency or sensibility, but it seems that this particular agency did this scumbag a solid by sending him to a lovely academy so that he could play sports without being shot at. What the author, Mr. Anderson, is suggesting is that the agency condemned this man to die because they didn't finance his vacation permanently, and instead released him "arbitrar[ily]" on his own recognizance to make adult choices and do his own thing. That his own thing consisted of selling drugs and running from the cops is nobody's fault but his own.

Check this out:

Older teenagers pose the most significant challenges, he added, because group homes won't take them and they cannot be forced to go to school. "They age out," he said. "It's a programming failure. If we miss the opportunity to connect with them when they are 15 or younger, it's harder to get through to them later."

Get that? They "age out," which seems to me to be the point where they are supposed to transition from being a juvenile to an adult, but is suggested here as being the point where government doesn't grab ahold of both of their hands and make them not kill people. And that transition stage of adulthood is no longer a natural stage, it's a "programming failure." Someone needs to tell the Lord to stop screwing these kids up with all these awkward stages and stuff.

To recap, Chicquelo's mother, who allegedly gave birth to him before she reached the programming failure stage, has lived in a dangerous ghetto in DC for probably her whole life, and has no responsibility whatsoever from the author's perspective in her son growing up a violent, wannabe, drug dealing gangster, and a never heard of DC agency is to blame for not financing a fantasy life for an adult with a long criminal history. I'm starting to put it all together now.

See, DC should be like one great big-ass game of The Sims, with some responsible individual constantly overseeing someone of questionable scruples. Who cares how that's gonna be paid for; we're talking about making people make better choices, like choosing to go to Lowes and apply for a job instead of shooting heroin and smoking cigarettes on the porch all day. Common sense stuff.

Think about how 24/7 oversight could have prevented this scenario:

The police affidavit states the bullet that killed Chicquelo was fired in self-defense, and the youth who fired the shot, who had charges pending against him and was under a court warning against possessing a gun, was not charged.

Maybe if the scumbag who killed Chicquelo in unlawful self defense had simply been placed in a beautiful town in Wisconsin for his prior felonious acts, for several years, he would have a scholarship to Yale instead of a ticket to prison. Let's not worry our pretty little heads over the court putting a warning out against him for being an armed scumbag instead of locking him up for being a threat to society; all of these choir boys are victims, can't you see? We can't be locking up victims!

Yikes. It's apparent that Mr. Anderson believes in glad handing scumbags, instead of placing them behind bars. I say give them one chance and one chance only to not be a heathen, and then slam them in prison for the rest of their lives if they decide to keep hurting people.

Beam me up Scotty!!

Mars is a six-month flight away, possesses surface gravity, an atmosphere, abundant water, carbon dioxide and essential minerals. They propose the missions start by sending two two-person teams, in separate ships, to Mars. More colonists and regular supply ships would follow.

Dude! If I were a single, 60-something space cowboy I would totally sign up for this! Impossible mission. . . check! Space ship. . . check! Making the history books for being seriously awesome. . . check! And can you imagine having all that frontier and different gravity to test new long range rifle ballistics?!?!

5. . .4. . .3-2-1, Blast Off! Another Rocketship Run!!!!

You 20-something whippersnappers without kids watching endless Noggin channel have no idea what in the world that's all about, but I gather one or two of my readers do! Listening to Lauri Berkner during a three and a half hour car ride is a serious upgrade from the Wiggles. Trust me.

Handy Reloading Tip

I'm not only a cheapskate, I also appreciate being able to improvise, adapt, and overcome when confronted with a problem; like being able to fit almost 49 grains of Reloder-17 in a Winchester case under a 175 grain Nolser J4. What would make this task better?

A drop tube would allow that much powder to fit, but I'm loading now, and don't have time to order from Sinclair or MidwayUSA. What to do, what to do. . . .


BIC pen tube to the rescue!!

If you recall, I've found uses for these tubes before. Just be careful to line up the bottom of the tube with the mouth of the case or you'll spill powder all over the place. Slow is better; I hold the powder pan from my scale over the funnel and tap it softly with my index finger so that the powder barely trickles out. For fun, try loading a full case without the drop tube, and then use the drop tube to see how much more room you get!

I'll give a range report soon to let you know what I've been up to.

Happy Veteran's Day!!

My thanks go out to those who are on Active Duty, still keeping us safe!

Happy Birthday Marines!!

Oooooh Rah, Semper Fidelis, and all that good stuff!!

The Organ Trail

. . .you don't want to die from Exposure on the Organ Trail, so follow these handy tips to ward off the fleshy sickness:

• Stay alert and be aware of your surroundings and don’t wear earphones.
• Walk, run, hike and bike with a partner or group.
• Let someone know when you are on the trail and when you expect to come home.
• Don’t use paths or trails when it is dark out.
• Carry a cell phone.
• Carry a .357 Magnum handgun loaded with poison-laced teflon-tipped bullets made of lead and adamantium.

Actually, the Loudon county sheriff's department left that last bullet out, but I thought it made sense, so I put it in there.

Weirdos who like to show their satchel to random joggers don't seem to me like they fear spandex clad trail wanderers with cell phones. However, broadcast a story over national news about how a trail lurking pervert got a little too hands on with a running lady and ended up with a sucking forehead wound and I bet you that they might think twice about showing their wares in public.

Road Ragers

It's stories like this that make me doubt the future of humanity.

At some point, the driver of the Lexus pulled up and threw a container of yogurt at the Toyota. That’s when the driver of the Toyota displayed a small caliber handgun.

Dude. I get mad at other drivers just like anyone else, but even though I may scream a long list of obscenities, I never get to the point where I would throw things at another moving vehicle or brandish a gun, and certainly am not stupid enough to call the state police if I did.

Interesting part is the charges associated with these two morons; misdemeanors for the handgun guy, and felonies for yogurt slinger. Oh that just sounds bad.

On Daylight Savings Time

Many moons ago, some jackasses decided to fuck with the way human beings experience their lives while having enough light to see, and now twice a year we have to endure the mild mayhem that results in this arcane retarded practice.

Either way you look at it, you're screwing somebody out of the time/daylight continuum that they need to function. This is most apparent to me right now as all of my kids are wide awake at six o'clock in the morning, and stumbling around in exhaustion at seven o'clock at night because their little bodies don't know what the hell is going on.

I swear, anyone that I hear say that daylight savings is a good idea within ear shot of me is going to get punted right in the nuts. Period.

Pick a time already, and stay with it. Or at the very least, split the difference and call it settled. Humans are creatures of habit, and tweaking the clocks twice a year so that half of the office comes in an hour late is a stupid idea. My $.02

Booooolits n' brass n' stuff

Sinclair International is loving me these days. I've been on a massive reloading kick in order to maintain my shooting habit, and I'm not above trying new things.

This weekend I tested two brand spankin' new loads; one for my 308 and the other for my darling, the-AR15-from-DPMS. I've had some consistency issues with the 308 at distance, so I boiled up some 210 grain Sierra Match Kings over the new Reloader-17 for a nice OCW test. It went well, as did my 69 grain SMK over Varget OCW for the AR15. At long range though, one of these loads went fantastically well, while the other went very bad.

Browsing the Sniper's Hide thread on using the 208 grain Hornady A-Max with RL-17 verifies the "start slow end fast" mentality of ballistics, whereas you heave a ginormous (no autocorrect, awesome) bullet with a high B.C. for some long range groundhog splattering goodness. Checking my Shooter Ballistics software shows the 210 SMK as superior to my 175 Nosler CC load in the wind deflection department, with an additional 150 yards or so of sweet supah-sonic flight time, if I can start out in the 2,360 fps range, which I achieved. Somewhere though, something didn't go right - when I chose the load that had the 2,300 fps that I needed, and appeared to be on the accuracy node , it clocked it in a the range yesterday with a velocity of 2,437. Huh? I'm going to have to find out what went wrong there, as I shot some of these at 620 yards and my groups were spreading like two feet apart.

In for the win though was the trusty and reliable 155 grain Nosler CC handloads that I've used as a baseline for a year and a half. That one shoots really well, but at 2,668 fps average it's a little slow for serious long range work. My next move is to try tweaking my 175 grain loads, and perhaps doing an OCW test with those using RL-17, as I hear good things about that combo.

As for the 69 grain SMKs in the AR15, I was hitting groups of 7" or less at 620 yards, and that was with a Burris 2-7 variable with heavy reticle that obscures the entire 8" dot that I was shooting at. I'm pretty impressed.

On the way now are some more 155 grain booooolets for the 308, as well as many 69 grain pills for the 223.

Something that I also caught this weekend which explains the wild inconsistencies that I've been getting with my loads is that RL-15 and RL-17 get hung up in the LEE Perfect Powder Measure. I couldn't figure out why several shots would hit lights out at 500+ yards, and then one or two would hit like six inches low. Apparently, the long powder kernels get hung up like a horrible game of Jenga in my powder thrower, and that would explain why velocity on some of those shots would be 100 fps or more slower. I noticed when I was throwing charges and measuring them on the scale, that some of them would be way light; I bumped my powder thrower and a bunch of powder fell out. Now I know.

I have good things to report about the Competitive Edge Dynamics M2 chronograph that I am now using, as my last chrono - a Competition Electronics - had a C-Products magazine and .380 acp induced malfunction from which it could not recover.

As I've mentioned before, chronographs - like geraniums - need lots and lots of sunlight to function, and when you're a busy working dad that spends half his life driving to-and-from someplace, you may not have adequate light to work with. Also, Virginia is full of all these damned trees, which make what little sunlight you have pretty useless. The CED M2 chrono is all about combating the light problem, and it worked out very well this weekend.

Much reloading to do in a short period of time, as I am hoping to have a gazillion rounds loaded for the AR15 for some marksmanship lessons with my nephew. Hell yeah!

Violent video games are the cause of this

The game doesn't go on sale until Tuesday. But some thieves in northeast Maryland got their hands on more than 100 copies of the game. On Saturday night, they staged a covert operation at the GameStop in Bel Air.
***
The men, who were armed with guns, planned the heist for closing time at the store.

See, that just proves that if video games didn't have guns and icky shooting in it, thugs wouldn't feel that they needed guns to steal copies of it.

Zombie preparedness

I just found this website called Zombie Tools which offers edged weapons custom made for zombie killin.

The Rough and Ready Bone Machete is my fav; although I don't have the dough for one at the moment. Check out their sweet lineup of zombie images!

Old school DMR rifles

The US military has drug out the M14s and used them in the DMR role, as well as fielded the dead sexy Mk12 Mods 0 and 1 based on the M16 platform, but what does the rest of the world use?

Seeing these two Spanish Army CETME Model Cs complete with beat to hell wooden furniture leads me to believe that the DMR concept was not created at the same time as XBox 360 came out, and may actually pre-date the Atari.

It is kinda sacrilegious to see one of them wearing a Leupold MK4 - which has made its bones in combat like the CETME - sitting next to another well worn CETME wearing a NC-Star. It would be less offensive to put pearl handles on General Patton's Peacemaker.

I don't know what other countries use for an interim range precision rifle, but I wouldn't want to have one of Spain's finest taking a crack at me with one of those CETMEs, NC-Star or not!

I propose a different solution

"The Commonwealth isn’t so thrilled about Washington’s plans to "relocate" some wild animals and critters pulled from homes in the District. It’s not the relocation that has Virginia officials so upset; it’s where the animals may end up: Virginia."

DC plans on trapping opposums and other vermin critters and moving them South of the Potomac for a better life. As the article states, government officials are limited on being able to kill them, so my solution is to pass out Ruger 10-22s to the populace and let them handle it. I bet it would be cheaper, too.

Commenter Bob_Ryans_Toupe for the win

"I don't know why Virginia officials are so upset about this when hundreds of thousand of vermin from Virginia travel to and from DC every workday."

That's funny right there!

To all those from free states. . . .

. . .DC is not concerned about your gun or property rights. It's a gamble just driving through on the beltway with your guns locked in a vault underneath a viscious doberman with a toothache; best leave the roscoe with your friends while you visit.

Gunfight in Mexico

There really isn't much to see, as this is a cell phone video shot at night, but the audio tells of a gun battle with full auto weapons, and not gunshow ARs and AKs. The only semi auto fire that I can tell is at the very beginning.

The back story is that the Mexican military had some drug lord cornered, and a convoy of cartel guys came to get him. I wouldn't bother watching the whole thing; it sounds the same from the first minute til almost the last. It does give you an idea though.

USMC fielding M110 SASS

Another Sniper's Hide link with a SAM stating that the M110 will replace the MK11 Mod 1 and M39 EBR.

The Knight's Armament folks have to be dancing on the table tops right now. I can see why the 308 AR platform is so popular, as it's a blast to shoot.

Pimp your M14

The M14 platform may be dated, but it still makes for one sexy weapon system! This guy built a MK14 Mod 1 from a Springfield Scout, and it has more bumps and protrusions than you can shake a stick at. Saaaahhhweeet!!

If only I had several grand layin around, I might have to build one of those babies for shooting four legged critters while clad in Multi-cam and skateboard helmet!

Boop. "Whiskey One Niner, we have an unidentified marmot digging an entrenchment at five-eight-two meters. Requesting permission to reduce the Tango."

Sksssssst

Boop "Roger that, Eco Three, your cleared hot."

Sksstckk

Boop "Solid copy, Whiskey One Niner. And don't call me Roger."

Equipment Change Proposal: Suunto edition

**Update: A picture is worth a thousand words:



Click to make bigger. The black watch is the Suunto, and you can see where the pathetic little nubbins of elastoplastofantastico broke with such ease. Also, you can see the Suunto's $40 replacement which connects the strap via big steel nubbins of stainless glory. Not gonna break there. I'm going to JB-Weld the hell out of the Suunto vice sending it back for a new plastocraptoelastomerase housing that will fall apart when exposed to pressure.

But to make my point, the engineers at Suunto managed to cram all that techno goodness into a rough and tough housing small enough to go onto your wrist, and then when it came down to the structural part that connects to the strap, they went to lunch. It's the exact same phenomenon that happened with my Maxpedition phone case. They built a hardcore case and then when it came to the belt clip they just stuck some junk on there and called it a day. No wonder we outsource so much labor to China; if it's going to suck, might as well make it cheap too!

To any engineers that may make it to this site, please take the time to do a 100% job so that stuff doesn't suck.

****

OK, so my Suunto Vector watch broke on me again this weekend, and I'm really pissed off about it. If you recall, I broke it earlier this summer after it was waaaaay out of warranty, but Suunto fixed it for $55 which made me happy. Turn around time was short as well.

So Saturday night the holes where the pin that attaches the wrist strap broke clean in the exact same way it broke before. The pin just pulled right through with little effort. At the time, I was wrestling in a life-or-death fight with a crazed killer in an alleyway sitting on my bed holding baby CTone, and as I casually placed my arm down as support so I could lean back, that's when the watch broke. Again, no effort involved; the watch had just slipped down to where my wrist bends, and when I put my weight onto my hand, I felt the watch give.

So now I'm looking at the back of the watch, right at the failure point, and it dawns on me how shitty the construction of the watch housing is. I forgot to take a picture this morning to show you, but here's a 5.11 watch that had a similar failure, and you can at least get an idea of the problem.

Now I'm no engineer, but I am a mechanically minded soul who has built a ton of shit in his time. You people out there who have also built a ton of shit take a look at that last link at that man's watch and tell me: who the hell thought that it was a great idea to construct a watch with a tough housing to hold all the cool ballistic doodads, and then just go all half assed on where the strap connects?

"Hey Earl, you reckon we aughta put some more material in there, you know, where the strap thingy that physically holds the watch to the arm attaches? Looks like there's barely enough material there to hold off a good sneeze."

"Hell no! What are you crazy? Failure points Shmearlure points!!! We're engineers for cryin' out loud!! We do shit our way, even if it sucks and makes no sense!!"

"So what, you wanna keep it that way? It would be so simple to just reinforce that area to make it stronger, and we would end up with a product that is 100% bomb proof! We could really be proud of what we built!"

"No. Just. . . .no. If anything, we should make those pin holes as thin as possible to save the company the extra money for the high tech polymer. If the damn thing breaks, that's not my problem."

So there you have it. I was browsing the comments on the Suunto website, and noticed a glaring trend where people bitch about the wrist straps breaking. I found this to be the case with the Vector, as the strap on mine basically rotted off from several years of me never taking the watch off. Ultimately it's going to happen with anything other than aluminum or steel, which brings me to my latest dilemma: do I send my shitty Vector back to Suunto for another $55 servicing, after which I will have an awesome watch that could be ripped off my wrist by any four year old kid, or do I buy a Casio G-Shock from Wal-Mart for $50, and then save up some cash for a quality watch made of steel that's not likely to fold like a cardboard box the moment it has some torque applied to it?

The thing that gets me is that no one out there that I know of makes a watch with the features of the Suunto or Casio Pathfinder in a material that doesn't suck. I'm thoroughly convinced at this point that plastic watches are basically just disposable. Suunto just happens to make really awesome disposable watches, and if I want something that will last me a lifetime and I can pass down to one of my kids, it has to be constructed from something that has stood the test of time.

What it all boils down to is that I have plenty of other things to spend money on right now, least of which is fixing something that was supposed to already be fixed. I don't have time for that.

Suunto, why don't you make us all a bad-ass watch that doesn't suck? Can you make one out of steel? And by steel, I don't mean one that has a bunch of steel held together by that worthless elastospectacularplastomer bullshit that you guys cheerlead on your website; I mean a hardcore steel housing with a steel wrist strap held on by big ole' honkin steel pins. Can you do that for me please, thanks much.