Whir! - More Paintball Stuff

It worked! Last year, I had my agitated loader (Ricochet Apache if you care) break down. I assumed I would need to buy a new one. And then one day, this February, I stumbled across a message board post indicating the manufacture's lifetime warranty. I figured I might as well give it a try so I called them up. They asked for my address and said the replacement parts were on their way. About four days later, a package arrived with the parts.

I was delighted with their customer service but didn't actually bother switching out the bad parts for the good until today. With a too small screwdriver I managed to take the broken shells appart and put the internals in the new shell.

I popped some batteries in and tested it. Just like new, it went whir each time I tripped the ball feed sensor! Now my Apache is fixed! Yippy!

The boy tested it too. In fact, he kept testing it over and over and over. I asked him to stop it so the battery wouldn't wear down. He stopped, what a good boy, and I put the tools away. Before putting the loader away, I tripped the sensor for one more triumphant whir. The boy said, "Dadda, don't waste the battery." He's a quick learner. I turned the loader off and left it in my room.

I can't believe it'll be May tomorrow and I still haven't played any outdoor paintball this year. Usually I get at least one early season game in by the end of March. This year I had school and it rained and snowed a lot. It was just a bad combination for getting out and playing.

From Poland to Playstations

Tonight, the boy's final bedtime story was the history of World War II... in a nutshell. I spoke of how a bad guy named Adolf Hitler, in a country called Germany, attacked his neighbors, Poland, Belgium, and France. I then talked about how he got greedy and attacked Britian and Russia too. I explained how Winston Churchhill rallied his country to fight off the attacking airplanes from Germany.

I explained how Japan attacked us in Hawaii and that got us really upset. We helped Russia and Britain fight off the Germans while at the same time hopping from island to island fighting back the Japanese. First we rescued France and Belgium and stopped Hitler. We then stopped the Japanese by dropping two really big bombs on them (actually they were already considering surrender but I don't think he cared for the finer details, besides I didn't even mention Italy and the African campaign).

In the end we stopped Germany and Japan. And because we hurt them really bad, we helped them rebuild their houses and roads. Then we became friends and made up. To show how happy they were, the Japanese built us Playstation IIs.

The boy asked about X-Boxes and I had to explain that we make those in America and sell them to the Japanese. So, in his mind, because Germany attacked Polland, Japan gives us Playstations.

Aren't history lessons for 5 year olds just wonderful?

Random Things on the Road... III

On Thursday, on the way home from work, a small rock landed on my windshield and rested itself on my windshield wiper. Rocks hitting my windshield aren't that uncommon. What was noteworthy about this was that I was in stop and go traffic so there was noone going fast enough to kick up the rock. I guess it just wanted a ride and leapt onto my windshield on its own.

It enjoyed the whole ride home, the whole ride to work yesterday, and part of the way to Provo yesterday before deciding it had enough and hopped off. Odd little rock. I wonder where it will go next. Perhaps its on a sight seeing trip across the country.

General Conference

Conference was nice this year. It seemed to go by so fast though. I saw a theme this year on the simple elements of the gospel, Christ's atonement and repentence were mentioned quite a bit. I liked the Sunday morning talk from one of the quorum of the twelve (I was ironing shirts at the time and don't remember which one) about coming unto Christ with our burdens. I liked the poem on the carpenter of Nazareth mending the plow and the doll and mending our broken hearts.

Loving our neighbors and being christlike was a big theme too. President Hinckly spoke in the priesthood session about prejudice and racism. Several others in the various sessions also spoke on tolerance and loving others regardless of creed, race, or nationality. We need to be nicer to one another.

It just went by so fast!