Month: April 2010

The Metal Detectors Cometh….

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I heard this was a definite go but still had questions. While the Austin-American Statesman article has an obvious bias, it at least seems to answer the question.

And, under an exemption approved Tuesday as a part of a new security plan, Texans with a concealed-handgun license will be able to take their pistols into the statehouse as well.

So this sucks that we’ll have metal detectors, but at least CHL holders will not be abridged. Of course I don’t really care for that either because concealed means concealed. But as soon as you have to notify the guy working the detector, you’re going to stand out, you’re going to get some sort of special treatment (e.g. won’t have to go through the detector), and it’s going to make the sheep scared and cause problems.

*sigh*

And in the end will safety really be improved by this? No. It won’t be any more or any less safe. It makes some legislators feel better about themselves (tho, good for Rick Perry for being the only one to vote against this measure), but that’s all.

We’ll see how this pans out in reality.

Peter Steele – RIP

/ hsoi

Wow.

I just heard that Peter Steele (y’know, from Type O Negative) just died at the age of 48. Supposedly due to heart failure.

Wow. I’m stunned. Big loss for the metal music world.

The “y’know, of Type O Negative”. Back in my college radio days I had a promo done by Peter. “Hi, this is Peter Steele, you know… from Type O Negative… and I died listening to WXJM.”  So, that’s what the above somewhat references.

Man.

I remember an old high school friend of mine went to visit some family one summer and came back with a mixed tape of music. There was this one song on there that we thought was awesome but had no idea who it was. After a lot of digging around we found out it was the band Carnivore. My exposure to Peter Steele had begun.

Then in the college radio time, I was talking with the rep at Roadrunner Records, who knew I was a Carnivore fan. He told me about Peter’s new project, then known as Repulsion (then Sub-Zero) but that name was probably going to change due to another band already with the name. The rep sent me a tape of the demos (that became Type O’s debut album) and I loved it. That first album from Type O Negative was awesome.

Carnivore was silly (tho fun). Type O was unique, heavy, artsy, moody, and poked a lot of fun at things. And Peter himself… an interesting man. I always enjoyed listening to him, especially as he battled his own issues in life and how he changed and evolved, especially made manifest on the last album. And I must admit… I really loved Peter’s voice, especially when he did his softer stuff, like “Nettie”.

We’ll miss you, Pete.

Updated: Official statements from Peter’s family and bandmates.

So Paul, what are we supposed to do?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Over at Sebastian’s place, “Carl from Chicago” posted a comment. The comment was in response to a Daily Show segment on open carry, which had Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign on as a guest. Carl received this email from Helmke regarding the segment, and in the email wrote this:

While The Daily Show pokes fun at those who carry guns openly, it just doesn’t make sense for the safety of our families to have more guns being carried by more people in more public places. It’s the wrong direction for this country to head.

As I said in the clip, gun owners should leave their guns at home. Let’s keep them out of places like coffee shops, sports stadiums, and schools.

So what you’re saying is, in an effort to increase safety of our families, gun owners should leave their guns at home.

That doesn’t make sense, if you look at facts and data.

If you consider actual violent crime statistics, about 85% of violent crimes happen outside the home. That means violent crime happens in coffee shops (like the 4 Lakewood police officers killed in a coffee shop). That means violent crime happens in sports stadiums (like at a Long Beach high school football game). That means violent crime happens at schools (Columbine, and numerous others).  Yes, those events involved guns, but the guns didn’t leap up on their own and kill innocent people. No, there was someone evil using the gun. They were acts of evil people, not acts of evil steel and evil lead.

Paul, if you’re willing to work against bad people being able to do bad things, I’d be with you. But you’re against good people doing good things. How can I support that? Furthermore, the constant refusal to look at the actual facts and data, to look at the actual Truth of the matter? Well… that just leaves us with “reasoned discourse”.

I know it’s not a coffee house, but it is a Waffle House. The fact two men were open carrying? It prevented the Waffle House from being robbed — known because when the thugs were arrested they flat out admitted seeing the two citizens with guns is what kept them from robbing the place (at least while the citizens were in the restaurant). Yes, open carry prevented a violent crime from occurring.

So tell me Paul, if we did follow your wishes and us good guys left our guns at home…. please tell me, what do you then propose to do to actually make our coffee shops, sports stadiums, and schools safer? Because the fact is, the bad guys aren’t going to leave anything at home, and the bad guys don’t like to come get us in our homes… they want to come get us at the coffee shops, the sports stadiums, the schools — this I know, for the data tells me so. Please Paul tell me, in light of the facts, what is your plan?

Perla’s

/ hsoi

Had dinner at Perla’s Seafood and Oyster Bar last night.

Austin folk, if you like fresh seafood, especially raw oysters, you must check out Perla’s.

Atmosphere is relaxed, casual, but neat and trim. If you showed up in your summer shirt and shorts you’d be fine, or if you’re in a suit you wouldn’t be out of place. We dined inside, but they have an ample outdoor patio under the oak trees right on South Congress Avenue.

I had a half dozen oysters. I forget exactly which I had… they have about 20 different varieties. But they were quite good. I appreciated the freshly grated horseradish. Wife and I also shared their salt and jalapeño pepper fried calamari… quite good, not overdone at all (very easy to overdo it). For entrées, Wife had an angel-hair pasta with some Gulf prawns, watercress, capers, olives, and I forget what else was in the sauce… paired well with a pino grigio Manu Sauvignon Blanc (wife corrected me). I had a pan roasted grouper with morel mushrooms in a fantastic lemony buttery sauce; very delicate, well executed. We also shared a side of their lobster stock, cheddar & green onion grits — folks, you’ve never had grits taste so good. Finished off with a strawberry rhubarb tart, which on the plate looked like it was going to be a load of pastry but wound up being quite well balanced and not heavy at all.

Service was excellent. This isn’t a hoity-toity fine-dining establishment, but you can tell they care about service and providing not just quality food but a quality experience as well. I appreciated how the waiter knew what was going on, what the restaurant did and didn’t have. The waiter didn’t interfere too much in our meal, but you could tell he was always keeping tabs on things. Just very well executed.

Prices are on the expensive side, but I’ve come to expect that whenever you go to a seafood place that doesn’t consider seafood to be “catfish”. 🙂  I like catfish, but I hope you understand the differentiator here.

Thing is, as I look at the Yelp reviews, Perla’s seems to be a mixed-bag. We had no problems with service, but that seems to be their biggest problem. Maybe it was because we had a special night there (and making prior reservations sure helped). Maybe it was because we came on a Tuesday night a little earlier than later and they certainly were not full (not empty, but certainly no one was waiting for a table). Who knows. But the end result was we had a good experience. Maybe the lesson is to make reservations and go at off times?

Anyway, I’ll certainly go back. Hopefully it will be another home run when I do.

Leatherman MUT

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I love my Leatherman Wave. One of the handiest tools I have, and I carry with my always.

I see Leatherman has come out with a new product, the Leatherman MUT. (h/t Uncle)

Here’s a link to their PDF brochure.

I don’t think I’d use this as my EDC, but in the range bag or taking with me (in addition to the Wave) into the field? It could be useful.

And just for the TXGunGeek I have this little quote from the brochure:

The MUT comes with a wrench accessory that features 1/2” and 3/8” 12-point heads for adjustment to optics systems. Built to military performance specifications, the ballistic nylon MOLLE sheath features extra wrench and bit kit accessory pockets. When not in use the sheath can hold a double-stack 9mm clip.

Clip. *sigh*

Shooting a pistol from the benchrest position

/ hsoi

A friend of mine has begun pistol shooting and he was asking me about shooting his pistol from the benchrest position. I went looking for some resources online, especially pictures (this friend lives in another state so I cannot physically demonstrate and teach him things), and surprisingly didn’t find a lot about pistol benchrest shooting. However, I did find a few things worth sharing.

The above image is from this article by Barbara Baird on the BassPro.com website. Ms. Baird is an NRA Certified Instructor, and as an NRA Instructor myself I can say what is being demonstrated above is the NRA taught technique.

It’s not the best technique.

I’m not going to say it’s wrong, because I’m unaware of any “One True Way” to shoot a pistol from benchrest. But there are two problems. 1. Look at what is supported: hands and wrist. Is the gun itself supported? The point of shooting from a rest is to remove you (the shooter) from the equation as much as possible. You strive to do everything you can to reduce or eliminate the gun moving so you are shooting from the most stable platform possible. In the above picture, just a tiny movement of the wrist is all it would take to move that gun. The gun itself is just not that well supported. 2. The shooter is using a semi-automatic handgun, and resting in that manner puts upward pressure on the bottom of the magazine. This can cause the magazine to be pushed further upwards into the gun and could cause feeding problems. It’s not horrible to do this, but just be mindful that your shooting position doesn’t interfere with the function of the gun.

Compare to this picture (and ignore the revolver vs. semi-auto aspect):

The above picture is from the ChuckHawks.com website article on shooting a handgun from a benchrest. What do you notice that’s different? Look at how much support that gun has. The gun frame is cradled in a sandbag. The shooter’s wrists are supported by sandbags. The shooter’s elbows are supported by sandbags. It’d be great if the shooter could have been all the way up against the bench, his chest pressing into the bench, but looking at the width of that bench and I don’t think there’s enough room. Nevertheless, this demonstrates the key: support! The gun and the shooter are as rested and supported as they can be. As much movement as possible has been eliminated without interfering with the function of the gun. That’s the key.

One thing both pictures demonstrate? The shooting position is as close to a “normal” shooting position as possible. That is, the standard two-hand Modern Isosceles stance, but instead of standing just resting on the bench. Isosceles, Weaver, whatever it is you do, just note to continue to do it from the bench.

The reality is, life does not always hand us ideal situations. My friend’s gun is a Taurus 709 slim and there’s just not a lot of “frame underside” by which to support the gun, especially when you compare it to that big revolver in the second picture. Furthermore, the range you’re shooting at may have tables only so big, may have restrictions or limited equipment. Sometimes you just have to make do with what the situation provides you. Just remember, the key is to support the gun as much as possible to eliminate movement and other “shooter influence” from the process of shooting.

Do give a read to Ms. Baird’s article (it’s fairly straight-up NRA Basic Pistol material), the Chuck Hawks article, and also this article from Guns & Ammo Magazine. They all contain good information on pistol benchrest shooting.

How to handle your mistakes.

/ hsoi

When you make a mistake and flub something, what do you do? Do you stop and start over? Or do you just keep going?

Whatever you do, it’s been my experience that most people always do the same thing no matter the context. Today I write to say we need to consider how we recover from mistakes and choose the right approach based upon the context.

For example, I was doing dry-fire practice working on drawing my pistol from a concealment holster. Typical ways to flub the draw are the shirt doesn’t get out of or remains in the way, or your strong hand gets a poor initial grip. What do you do? As soon as you notice the flub do you stop and start over? or do you acknowledge the flub but proceed and work to recover from it to still reach your end goal? I used to stop and start over, but now I want to keep going. My reasoning? If the day comes and my life is on the line, I could well flub things. In a situation like that, what should my ingrained response be? Recover and move on? Or go “damnit! I screwed up!” reholster and ask for a do-over? I don’t think the latter is reasonable for the situation, so the only option is to recover and move on. Thus I must train myself to acknowledge the flub (must know what went wrong so I know what course of action to take to recover) then immediately recover from it, keeping my cool the whole time. This is the response I would want to have if my life depended upon it, so that’s how I must train.

Let’s consider my martial arts practice, specifically working on forms. If I was working on a form because I was entering a competition, I’d probably want to train myself to recover and move on. You’re performing, and the show must go on! But these days I do not participate in martial arts tournaments, so if I’m working on a form it’s because I want to get it correct, because there’s something in my own body and soul I wish to feel. Plus I’ve been away from Kuk Sool for almost a year and I admit some things are slipping my mind. Thus stopping and fixing is fine for me here because the context may dictate it (i.e. I forgot) or perhaps because I came to a point in my practice where I realized something and wish to focus on it. My goals here are different, and how I contend with mistakes must serve the end goal.

This reminds me of when I was in undergrad and played in a rock band. We were doing some basement recordings. We only had so much tape, so when we’d screw up I’d tell the guy running the board “Rewind and erase that.”  But he never listened to me and kept tape rolling. In my mind there was no point in keeping bad takes, especially when we had a finite amount of tape. However I’m glad he kept the tape rolling because it captured some gems. Looking back I can say we should have handled it both ways. When we’re working out a new song, sure we have to stop when mistakes are made because we’re still learning. But once the song is known, when we’re doing rehearsals for gigs, just keep going… unexpected things could happen during the gig and we wouldn’t come to a halt on stage, so practice accordingly.

Be clear on your end goal(s) and ensure you work towards it. One part we overlook is how we handle our mistakes. The way we handle our mistakes may need to change based upon the context, so be sure to analyze, figure out the plan, and behave accordingly… especially as you practice. Train yourself to handle your mistakes as the context dictates. Your life may depend upon it.