I'm not sure where you got off on your crazy "Let's have a reloading challenge" but nowhere in this thread did I ever challenge you to a reloading match. Every post I have made has simply been an attempt to quell you chest thumping and espouse a single logical thought to you and Bushmaster. To me, it is obvious that you just want to argue for the sake of arguing and when another person steps in and says the same thing I do, you agree with my entire premise. Half of your ranting is saying the same thing I've been saying.
The technology, the tools, are not going to make everything perfect. They're only tools. It's the user who is responsible.
The best I can do is realize that there will be glitches, and and plan to deal with them. If someone goes into a match assuming there will be no glitches, I'll definitely whup his butt, because he won't be prepared if something goes south on him.
Thank you for agreeing with me, it took long enough but is satisfying to have a person with your breadth of real-world experience acknowledge the simple truth I put out in the first place. You cannot blame a piece of equipment, when operated within its design specifications, except when it fails catastrophically, for operator-controlled errors. Machines cannot make mistakes, only do what they have been designed or programmed to do.
Now...
Theory don't mean squat when real-world conditions step in
Theory does indeed work in the real world and when it doesn't, the models are adjusted accordingly. You wouldn't be looking at this post if it didn't. Theory is what lead 3 men to develop the transistor based on a few theoretical papers written at the turn of the century. So, you should thank all those men who understand theory because all the great things we enjoy today, most of them are based soundly in engineering principle and theory.
As far as your disdain for college educations, I will repeat what I said earlier. The top designers in any field have both an education and experience. Either one without the other will impose limitations on that person's skill set that are difficult, while not impossible, to overcome. There is a big difference between knowing how to put together a 350 engine that performs like a champ and being able to design a 350 engine that performs like a champ. One requires experience and the other requires education in theory and engineering principles. When you put the two together, think Indy 500 racing team, you get some really kick-butt results.
They teach all sorts of great theories in the ivory towers, and many of the folks seem to eventually come to believe them, to the exclusion of what exists outside the hallowed halls of academia. Colleges today teach that bears are misunderstood herbivores, that Arabs really love us, that a whistle and car keys are effective tools for a 110 pound female facing a 220 pound rapist, and that a two pound chunk of wood and steel will turn whoever holds it into a drooling homicidal racist maniac. Yup. I've got a great deal of respeck for them colleges today
When you spout of things like the above, it makes you look like, no offense, an ignorant person who wasn't smart enough to get into college and is still mad that they didn't get to go. I'm not saying that is true, but that is what it looks like. You can disagree with what they teach in college, but you cannot disagree with the simple truth that a college degree in a fundamental field, such as engineering, is important if you plan to pursue a serious career in a design field. Let me ask you a question. At your job, with all the precision equipment, is it the tech with a trade school degree or the engineer with a college degree who runs the show? At most successful companies, it is the latter because they have both sets of skills I talked about above.
There are plenty of people who did not go to college who could kick the pants off of engineers who did but the simple fact remains that if you don't have a the background you gained in college, eventually you will be limited by what you do not know.
Okay... Deavboy says that you have to have perfect equipment, and trust it implicitly.
I say that Deavboy is gonna have a sincere problem when (not "if") his equipment malfs.
Don't worry bogie, I still check every case for powder, because as I noted in many of my other posts, equipment can fail and that is part of the whole lifecycle of a device. There are also equations to predict when those failures will occur! If you give the theoretical model good parameters, you'd be surpised how accurate it really is!
I don't care. Your money's good too. Whaddya say... A beer a group?
I happen to know someone that lives in St. Louis that I occasionally make it up to see. I'd be happy to bring a case of beer and use it as payment in exchange for getting a chance to learn more about precision rifle shooting since my experience is currently confined to handgun shooting. My caveat is you don't get to drink until after I'm done taking notes. Unlike some people in life, I'm not too proud to sit down, shut up, and learn from someone who knows more than me on a specific topic of interest. One of the benefits of studying with an open mind is realizing that there are plenty of people out there that know far more than me but with the tools I have, there is no reason I can't learn what they know.
Edit: Shiner is only 70 miles from me, I'll even pick up a fresh case from the factory for the occasion since that appears to be your poison of choice. I bet we can get Eep to come to because I'm sure he is a Shiner man as well.