When I checked in for the flight, they said they had to change my seat because it was mostly an empty flight and they needed to balance the weight. When I went to my new seat, I noticed that someone was sitting in the seat that apparently would have upset the weight balance. The flight was almost full. When I landed back home, they said they couldn’t process my refund until they understood what happened. Won’t give me a definite time frame of when I can expect it.

So you have the airline unilaterally fucking up at such a level that they don’t even understood what happened. You have the airline lying to their customers about overbooking flights. It’s all par for the course, we’re fucked.

I just do not think they are as useful a survival tool as many may think.

Just for shits and giggles I’d like a 300 blackout with supressor and subsonic ammo, and a 22 auto pistol with supressor and subsonic ammo, but they are mainly useful against things that are not themselves armed with a gun… >;*)

I don’t rate my chances as an individual even with a 300 blackout supressed against a bunch of trigger happy cops or military….. fine green bamboo shavings in their meals is the better option…

The battery on that model didn’t just store up juice to kick the engine over; it also acted as an electrical regulator of some sort. As soon as it started to lose its charge (particularly if the rainstorm were getting in to mess with it), the entire electrical rig would go down. Shivering on the side of the highway, in a borrowed sweater, because the battery was designed to perform multiple tasks. Fun fun.

I do wonder if you have anything against gun ownership, or your general feelings on the right to own a firearm. I assume you are naturally for self defense, but personally I’m not in favor of tyranny of the strong (speaking as a starved stick figure who would otherwise have to rely on my ability to remember jackie chan movies for my martial arts ability).

Troubleshooting based on the wrong assumption is extraordinarily common and you spot smart guys buy how fast they relize they’ve gone awry. Amongst my mis-steps two embarrassing episodes from my past stay with me.

I had a ’72 Yamaha 650 twin that I took out one day had a nice day on it, came home, and parked it. The next weekend when I cranked it it started misbehaving – left cylinder firing and the right cylinder dead. I immediately “knew” it had to be electrics and wasted quite a bit of time before I recranked it and walked behind it to discover raw gas coming out of the right exhaust – the metering pin had escaped the CV piston.

In the other case it was a 2000 Tundra which developed haunted electrics. Batteries would discharge overnight or over a work shift; or I would return to the truck and the lights were on but the light switch was off; or the A/C fan was blowing and the and the key was not present; and several other odd symptoms. After several months of electrical troubleshooting both physically and through the schematic I determined that the problem was caused by the “intergration relay” and prepared to replace it. The cost of a new one was astronomic so I waited to get the money together and drove around with jumper cables. One day I noticed water on the floorboard… Water had managed to seep around the driver side wiper drive seal and drip into the “intergration relay” the symptoms I saw depended on which things shorted out that day. Silicone sealant fixed the problem.