The Missing Box

I have a Love/Hate relationship with UPS. I get a lot of packages, so delivery services are an important part of my life. Back in the old days, without a doubt, UPS was the best. It wasn't even a close contest. Then, the strike happened, and it's never been the same since. Around here, in today's world, I'd rank them tied for 2nd with Fedex behind USPS. DHL is definitely last. The reason they're low? The distribution center for the Dallas area is terrible. Now, I have another reason to rank them lower.....

If you'll indulge me by turning back the calendar to late spring, you might remember that I got a Lenovo 4K monitor that wasn't working and RMA'd it back to them since it was under warranty. At this point, the whole thing turned into a comedy of errors. 

We'll start this with Lenovo, mishandling this by having me return it to Best Buy, then sending it back saying that they don't repair monitors. That was followed by me contacting them and receiving a promise that they'd "look into it". This was followed by a company I never heard of sending me an email stating that I was to receive a package. No mention what the package was or why. Tracking then indicated that this mystery package was delivered, but there was no package at my house.

As you might imagine; this led to contact with UPS, and ultimately Lenovo who told me that the mystery company was a distributor and the box was my replacement monitor! Furthermore, UPS showed that the package was delivered successfully!!! This then led to a 4 month back-and-forth between myself and Lenovo with me getting progressively more agitated and them convinced that I was trying to get another free monitor. 

Then this happened. Out-of-the-blue, the doorbell rings yesterday afternoon when no one was expected. At the door was an older woman with 3 young kids that I figured, must be trying to sell something. What she had to say was that she lives at 102 Redwood (we live at 120) and that there was a package addressed to me that they've "had for a while"...... Would I like to come down and get it. Up the street at their house in the entryway where apparently it's been since MAY 28th, was my monitor!!! They've had it for over 4 months!!! It hadn't been opened, nor indeed, moved. They just hadn't felt the need to get it to the addressee. I'm not sure who to be angry at!?! Lenovo for it's abysmal communications, UPS for the dyslexic driver, or the strangely unmotivated neighbor? I guess, in the end, I'm just glad I got my monitor.

A Bigger Bang for The Frugal Propellerhead Buck!

I'm sure some of you could see where all this BB/Pellet gun stuff was leading, right? Yup, after lots of not so subtle hints and months of gun magazines laying around the house, I finally dropped the bomb on my wife this weekend. What happened was that we were doing the family birthdays early since my in-laws are going on an extended "fall foliage" trip to the Northeast starting this week. Mine, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's birthdays all fall within a couple of week of the end of September and beginning of October. So, my wife has been harrassing me about what I wanted for my birthday, which has always been a bit of a chore anyway since my interest tends toward the esoteric. 

I finally decided to shoot straight (I know, terrible), and tell her I wanted a handgun. No, not the PPK with a suppressor. My love of all things James Bond only goes so far; not that I don't love the PPK! More on this later. Over the course of the whole pellet gun adventure, she had been quizzing me about my interest in guns anyway. And I had filled her in on my long-standing interest in the things going back to when I actually owned a number of them in my younger years before we ever met. I had subsequently sold them when I was working in higher education and living "on campus" where I couldn't have them.  But I've always had an abiding interest in them both from a historical (collecting) standpoint as well as to shoot them....

..... at one point owning a couple of different Ruger Mk II semi-automatics in .22LR and a Ruger Security Six along with a Marlin 995 Semi-auto .22LR and Rossi Model 62 copy of the old Winchester pump .22 design.

Do I wish I would have kept them all those years ago? Probably, but that's water under the bridge now. My interests are less in revolvers and 19th century designs anyway, so on to what's going on now!

At the moment; this is the target. The "Wonder 9s", or more specifically..... modern, polymer-framed, high-capacity, striker-fired, 9mm handguns. There's a lot of them out there, ranging from the rather pedestrian Smith & Wesson M & P (Military & Police) for $350 to $400, to the $800-$900 H&K/Sigs or the ubiquitous Glocks at the middle price-point. features and performance tend to be fairly similar, but the build quality and country of origin. The progression on price/build-quality equation seems to go from import to American made back to import (from Germany, Austria or Switzerland) going from low to high. So, firearms from manufacturers like Taurus, Star, etc. from places like Spain and Brazil tend to be lower. Then we get American manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson in the middle, followed of course, but the Glocks, H&Ks and Sig Sauer being the most expensive. 

Then you have a few "out-lyers" in the market such as this Canik made in Turkey which is a copy of the Walther P99 and of excellent quality according to virtually all reviews as well as..

the well-known and well-thought of CZ offering such as the above CZ-75 made in the Czech Republic. So, what am I interested in?

This is the one. The Walther PPQ M1. Why not the Bond-esque P99? Yes, it's a fine pistol, but here's my reasoning. 

• The main-line Walther grips feel great in my smallish hands, whether that be the P99 or the PPQ and indeed the compact CCP as well.
• The PPQ is often referred to as the updated and improved P99 with a better double-action trigger system.
• The PPQ has the standard M1913 Picatinny rail that makes it easier to mount laser and such on to.
• The P99 has been out of production for several years and the "first version" (which I like best) tends to be difficult to find and when found tends to be at least $100 (or more), more expensive than the PPQ. This is probably the deciding factor.

However, there's a couple of other possibilities as well.

One is the Canik which of course is a Walther copy, but barring finding a PPQ/P99 at an affordable price, there's also a "dark horse"; the Magnum Research MR9 Eagle. It's a Walther P99 polymer frame, with a Magnum Research stainless slide mounted. This German-American cooperative effort came in two flavors, with the one you see here as half and inch longer than the 4" version. Most critically, they aren't well known and as a result sometimes sell for substantially less than either the P99 or PPQ. No you know. I'll update you guys when I've locked onto a target!