Month: May 2010

Updated to “It Happened Again”

/ hsoi

Here’s the backstory.

We thought through all the options. The best we could come up with was seeing if there was another nesting mother and set the eggs with her. I called around to a bunch of local wildlife rescues, but because it was Saturday the only one I could reach was the Austin Wildlife Rescue. They agreed that setting the eggs with another mother was probably the best recourse. Sure enough, there was another nesting mother across the street. We took in all 20 eggs, candled them, and 6 were certainly viable. I donned a pair of heavy work gloves and set about annoying the other mother duck as I set the 6 eggs underneath her. Boy, she can bite! I went back a few minutes later and she had repositioned herself over all the eggs. So, it’s the best we can do given the situation. We’ll see what happens.

I went around the yard doing some cleanup of the feathers. We went into our neighbor’s backyard to see if we saw feathers… and we got more than we bargained for. Just behind their back fence, just inside the greenbelt (i.e. just inside lots of brush and cover), we saw the half-eaten carcass of the duck. I went back into the greenbelt and looked around. Given the grasses have grown much higher and with the rains last night, it was easier to tell that certainly something has a pattern of behavior. In fact, I found a second carcass just a few feet from this one, likely that of the duck from last month.

I want to figure out what this is that’s eating the ducks.

It happened again

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Momma Duck #2 was eaten last night. 😦  The pattern looks the same.

About a month ago Momma #1 was taken. I had set a game camera out but it turned up nothing. I figured the critter would have come back relatively soon and when nothing did I turned off the camera. The camera has a flash (not infrared) and was poised near my neighbor’s house and their daughter’s window — I didn’t want “other critters” to keep tripping the camera at night, flash going off, and disturbing my neighbor’s daughter. Thus I turned it off after nothing came back.

Of course, now I’m kicking myself for having turned it off. But who knew?

Camera goes back out and will remain as long as I can. If the critter came back, I’ll bet it’ll come back a third time.

The bummer part? Momma #2 had about 20 eggs and had been sitting for quite a while. We figured another week, maybe two at most, and we’d have ducklings. So, we brought in a sampling of the eggs and candled them. Sure enough, some of the eggs have chicks growing. Not 100% sure how far along they are, but certainly there’s blood vessels and “masses” within.

We’re trying to figure out what to do about them.

On the one hand, the neighborhood duck situation is getting out of hand. Most neighbors like it, but some really hate it and have been complaining. There’s effort to get ducks captured and relocated. To hatch more babies would just contribute to the “neighborhood vermin” problem. So in a way, whatever is eating the ducks is actually helping to control the population, which is good. Furthermore, it can be argued that adding more ducks to the neighborhood could risk bringing more unwanted critters. Once I figure out what is eating the ducks well… what if it is a bobcat? Do we really want to continue to encourage that by growing the food source?

But on the other hand, I just can’t stand to see little babies die, at least not without a fighting chance. Sure they’re just ducks, but something still pulls at me to try to help them live. As well, if we do something like say incubate them, the whole thing becomes quite a learning experience for the kids. Even for Wife and me because well… if someday we’re going to move to the country and raise ducks or chickens or whatever, such would be a good experience. Of course, another option is to find someone to take them, but being Saturday there’s not much open right now.

*sigh*

What to do… what to do….

Meatballs good

/ hsoi

So Wife did some water buffalo meatballs the other night.

Fantastic. In fact, arguably better than beef. For some reason the texture was smoother, kinda velvety.

These experiences with the ground water buffalo convince me that going with ground meat would be a good way to introduce folks to water buffalo. Since the meat is so heavily broken down by the grinding, there’s no texture issues to have to worry about so all the person deals with is the flavor. Flavor is generally what will convince someone, and texture is usually going to be either a non-issue or a turn-off. Ground takes texture almost entirely out of the equation, so it’s all about the flavor.

Plus, ground allows you to do simple things that won’t freak people out too much, like burgers or meatloaf or meatballs. It’s simple to cook. You don’t have to worry about “cooking it right”, especially if learning the ropes. Which means, if I was going to give some buffalo meat to folks, I’d probably give them ground.

The journey continues….

Guns in America – A Special Report

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Via TXGunGeek, that student project? It’s now up.

Check it out. It’s well produced.

There’s one video:

the guy doing the talking is TXGunGeek. The “acting” you see is from the recently held AT-7 class. I recognize most of the faces. 🙂

From open children to open carry

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

It’s raining.

For whatever reason, that’s caused more ducks than usual to congregate around our house. More ducks means more distractions for the kids. 😉  Plus, one mother mallard has 6 chicks (hatched probably just a few days ago), so the cute is irresistible.

The kids were outside tending to the ducks. I was in my office working. Wife was in the kitchen. Kids come back in the house to tell us that an Austin Police Officer drove up, rolled down his window, asked them if they were where they were supposed to be, “We’re homeschooled.”, “Alright.” and off he drove. Will it amount to anything? I don’t know, but I doubt it. We did have another talk with the kids about how to handle such situations. But what got me was what I found myself saying.

You see, Wife was saying how one of our homeschooling mentors always avoided such issues by running her errands after normal school hours. I can understand. We’re doing nothing wrong, we’re doing nothing illegal, but we are doing something that most people aren’t familiar with and “breaks the norm” of what’s expected… thus it has potential to cause trouble and bring headaches and hassles into our lives. So mentor’s approach was to just avoid it because she didn’t want to hassle. Wife doesn’t do that, we don’t lock the kids away and only bring them out when children are supposed to be brought out, but certainly Wife prefers to avoid the hassle.

I found myself saying that no, we can’t do that; we can’t avoid the hassle. Not saying we should flaunt it and invite it, but that if the hassle comes, it comes. What we’re doing is fine, legal, normal; it may not be mainstream, but how are people ever going to get used to it, acknowledge it, accept it, and not flinch or find it strange if we always keep it hidden away? If we always work to avoid the hassle, no one will ever see or know. How does that help or improve the situation? If anything, it could serve to make the situation seem worse because it’s being hidden away and not just openly done.

And I found myself thinking about Open Carry.

It may not be mainstream today, but how else are you going to get it to be mainstream unless you make it so? To hide it away isn’t going to help. Look at any sort of “civil rights” be it homeschooling or gay rights or women’s rights or various ethnic groups. You don’t get to sit at the front of the bus by always hiding at the back of it (by force or by choice).

Still trying to figure out how I stand on open carry, but this little experience certainly has influenced me a bit.

I was inspired to write this due to a comment made by Linoge on Uncle’s website. Thanx, Linoge.

The story of a few orders

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

A few product order stories to catch up on.

.38 Ammo

On October 1, 2009 I submitted an order to MidwayUSA for 10 boxes of R38S12, the Remington .38 Special +P 158 grain LHP… the so-called “FBI Load”.

Today, I received an email from MidwayUSA notifying me there was product for order. Eh? That only happens for general ordering, but I have a backorder. I called and asked and they received enough to fill all the remaining back orders then with some left over for general sale. So, in theory my back order is being processed as we speak and I should have it by next week. I am counting my chickens prematurely, because I have no confirmation of actual order processing. But I’ll trust the girl on the phone.

So 7.5 months to wait for this product. Never had a backorder that long in my life. 🙂  It got to a point where I opted against cancelled the backorder purely because I wanted to see how long it would be until it was filled. Now I know.

Blue Guns

So, the saga of the BlueGuns continues.

I did manage to get the botched order shipped back. They received, and it took about a week to process, then a few days to ship back. When I received them well… I still wasn’t happy.

All 6 XD-9 magazines did have proper latch holes in them now, but one still did not drop free and another still had the “blistered” look to it. I could tell these were the exact same two they originally sent, just cleaned up a bit. While I don’t blame them for not wanting to make a whole other magazine, they could have at least ensured the one fully worked. The blistered one does appear to be cosmetic, but how do I know that? It just seems bad enough like sooner or later it’s going to split.

The XD-45 magazines I have only looked at. They do look like XD-45 magazines, which is a good start. But as I’ve not been able to get together yet with anyone that owns an XD-45 (including the guys I did this order for), I haven’t been able to test them.

The 2 AR-15 magazines? They are better but still not right. If you let the bolt slam home, that’s enough to cause one of them to just drop free.

I’m really disappointed. You’d think given the hell and hassle that they’ve had to go through dealing with this order they would have gotten it right the second time around so they didn’t have to deal with it again. But alas, no. No, I haven’t contacted RINGS about this yet because I wanted to make a single phone call… I’m waiting until I see the guys with the 45’s so we can see if they work or not, so it may be another week or two.

But to be honest, I don’t even want to call them. I’m fed up and tired of it. What can they say to me at this point? And can I trust them? The one XD-9 mag that doesn’t drop free can probably be fixed with a little selective Dremeling, and the one that doesn’t look so pretty can be lived with. The AR mags tho really cheese me off… they’re expensive.

I will call them once I can confirm the 45’s working or not. Part of me wants them to make things right, but part of me is also just tired of it and wants to just return the products and get my money back. They seem nice enough on the phone and all, but there’s just no excuse for this.

Ruger LCR in .357 Magnum

/ hsoi

So, Ruger just put out a version of their LCR in .357 Magnum.

I’d be very curious to shoot one.

When I was researching a snub for myself, the original LCR was very attractive to me. The only things I did not like about it were the internal lock and the relative newness of it to the market. I wasn’t sure I wanted to bet my life on such things. But there wasn’t much question of how nice it felt in the hand and how nice the factory trigger was. I haven’t gotten to shoot one (don’t know anyone that owns one), but reports are that it’s actually quite pleasant, all things considered. Supposedly a mixture of the gun’s frame and overall construction, plus the Hogue grip.

So that’s what makes me curious about the .357 version. How pleasant is a .357 LCR going to be to shoot? Could it actually be manageable? And then, could you have .357 oomph in your pocket instead?

Very intriguing.

If Ruger or someone else wants to send me an LCR for test and eval, I’d be happy to do it. 🙂

Finally! My T-Grip arrived (with pictures)

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

It’s been a little over 2 months since I ordered a Tyler T-Grip for my S&W 442. But finally it arrived. I was starting to think it would never get here! To be fair, they warn you it could take 6-8 weeks. When I called a few times to inquire about status, the impression I received was they don’t keep a lot of inventory but make them as orders come in. But as well, they try to accumulate enough orders before doing a batch. Very understandable. I could be wrong about how they do things as I didn’t ask about their internal processes, but that’s just the impression I received based upon how the folks spoke with me.

As an aside, everyone I spoke to there was very polite and friendly. In fact, the guy that seems to do a lot of the actual fab work I ended up speaking with for quite a while and explained the Werner Carry System to him. He thought that was pretty darn cool. Nice folks.

So anyway, the Werner Carry System is why I obtained the T-Grip. My Hip Grip arrived a little while ago. Now with the T-Grip I can start to put it all together.

All photos taken with my crappy iPhone 3GS camera and what lighting there was in my office. Photos can be clicked to enlarge.

That’s the T-Grip itself. It’s just a piece of powder-coated metal (I think aluminum, not sure). Mine is a flat black to fit a J-frame. See those little copper tabs sticking out of it? Those are what hold the grip to the frame.

All you do is take off your grips (and you must have “standard size” grips, else it won’t fit) and slide the copper tabs over the frame. That’s it. You do NOT bend the tabs. It’s all held in place by the tension of the grips. So you put the grip panels back, screw them together, and the pressure of the grips against the frame provide enough tension/friction to hold the T-Grip in place.

So why get this?

Because it helps fill the hand.

That little dinky J-frame grip just does not fill my hand. Oh sure, I can put on my Pachmayr Compac grips and they are awesome: fill the hand, good grip, and absorbs a lot of the recoil/shock. But the downside is those grips are HUGE and concealment isn’t ideal. But this? The T-grip helps to fill the hand, and since it goes in front of the grip instead of behind, not only does it change how the filling of the hand works, but it also doesn’t add to the profile of the J-frame, which really aids concealment.

Take a look. Here’s the gun without the T-Grip:

It’s a little hard to see with my crappy iPhone camera, but if you look between the base of my middle two fingers and the frontstrap of the grip, you’ll see airspace. Sure some of that goes away when I close my hand around the grip, but without question there’s still airspace and wiggle room in there. Now compare to the same gun with the T-Grip installed:

Look at that same area at the base of my middle fingers against the frontstrap of the gun. See how that space is now filled in? Fantastic! It feels so much better in my hand. One downside is you can see how the T-Grip takes up some space at the top, where it rests upon the top-edge of the middle finger. That then raises the gun up a slight bit and if you compare where the butt of the gun comes to on my pinky, you’ll see there’s less pinky on the grip with the T-Grip installed. I’m not yet sure how much of a problem that is, as I haven’t shot it yet. But my guess is it won’t make a huge difference because even without the T-Grip there’s just not enough room for me to get my pinky on there anyway. YMMV.

Here’s what it looks like all together: S&W 442 with Hip Grips and T-Grip:

In dry fire, it feels a lot better in my hand. I really like it. But the real test is how it shoots. Since I got the grips in I haven’t been able to make it to the range, but I hope to remedy that soon.

When I shot 5 rounds of my carry ammo (Buffalo Bore 20/20C) with just the Hip Grip, it stung like hell. My intention is to try that again, shooting 5 rounds of the carry ammo and see how it goes. Then I’ll try shooting something like the Texas CHL test with the snub (and practice ammo) and see how that goes… if my hand isn’t in pain. My hypothesis is it’s still going to hurt because there’s nothing but a metal backstrap, but it won’t hurt as much as the Hip Grip alone because the T-Grip fills the hand, I’ll have a better grip, and the gun will wiggle and move less on recoil so it won’t just be freely slamming into my hand. Better grip, hopefully will lead to less pain.

I’ll post results when I have them.

Penne with Braised (Water Buffalo) Short Ribs

/ hsoi

Working from home has advantages (and disadvantages too, but that’s not the topic). One thing I often do is when I go down to have lunch, I’ll eat my lunch in front of the TV. A typical thing I like to watch? Food Network.

I like watching Giada De Laurentiis for more than her uh… “buxom personality”. The lady can cook and she makes some delicious dishes. I bought one of her cookbooks for Wife, and some fantastic stuff has come out of it. In one recent episode, Giada made this Penne with Braised Short Ribs. I’m reprinting the recipe in full at the end, just in case it ever disappears from Food Network’s website. Wife caught the episode too and opted to try it out.

Folks, it’s fantastic.

The only modification I’d make to the recipe? Cutting up a few katamala olives and adding them in (as a topping at the end, not cooked in); only a few, as they are strong and you just want them to accent the meat, not become the dominant flavor. But the recipe is fine without them.

Now, we’ve had it a few times with beef short ribs and it’s been great. So…. why not try it out with the water buffalo?

Defrosted a set of ribs, and cooked according to the recipe. I know Wife likes to make multiple changes at one time, and when it comes to cooking she’s got a good instinct for it. But she humored me and made only one change: water buffalo ribs instead of beef ribs. This is the engineer in me: if you change something, make one change at a time so you can isolate and know what that change did. If you change multiple things at once, how can you fully assess the impact of the individual changes? Wife’s thinking was, we know water buffalo needs “low and slow” cooking, so we should also change up the cooking time. But my thinking was, this was as different way of cooking the meat: it’s braising, lots of liquid, in a covered pan, and that’s going to do a lot to help break down the meat fibers. So let’s just see; the water buffalo is a new experience for us, so we need to experiment slowly and learn. Cook it exactly like the recipe says, and if it needs more time, we’ll leave it in longer. If it works out, it does, if it doesn’t it doesn’t; either way, we’ll learn from it.

A couple other small modifications happened. We didn’t have any Cabernet so a Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin was used instead. Also no fresh tomatoes so some canned were used, which added a little bit of liquid.

After 2.5 hours at 350º, we knew beef ribs were “fall apart”. We poked at the water buffalo rib meat with forks… it didn’t budge. So we put it back in for another 30 minutes. After 3 hours total, the meat started to come apart, but not “fall apart”. So another 30 minutes (3.5 hours total) and then it started to fall apart.

And, it was delicious. 🙂

If we try it again, I’m curious to fiddle with the cooking time a bit more. Should we try 350º for maybe 4 hours? Or perhaps go 300º for something like 5-6 hours? We do have to mind the liquid evaporation, so too much time isn’t ideal. But, this will certainly be the next variable to play with. My thought is 350º for 4 hours.

So far so good. I’m liking this!

Penne with Braised Short Ribs
Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis

Prep Time:20 min
Cook Time:2 hr 40 min
Level: Easy
Serves: 4 to 6 servings
Ingredients
4 pounds beef short ribs
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
5 Roma tomatoes, cut into eighths
1 cup red wine, such as Cabernet Sauvignon
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 cups low-sodium beef broth
1 pound penne pasta
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Directions
Place an oven rack in the lower 1/3 of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Season the ribs with salt and pepper. In a large heavy-bottomed Dutch oven or ovenproof stock pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. In batches, add the ribs and brown on all sides, about 8 to 10 minutes. Remove the ribs and set aside. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, wine and mustard. Bring the mixture to a boil and scrape up the brown bits that cling to the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Return the ribs to the pan. Add the beef broth, cover the pan and place in the oven for 2 1/2 hours until the meat is fork-tender and falls easily from the bone.

Remove the ribs from the cooking liquid. Using a large spoon, remove any excess fat from the surface of the cooking liquid. Using a ladle, transfer the cooking liquid in the bowl of a food processor. Process until the mixture is smooth. Pour the sauce into a saucepan and keep warm over low heat. Remove the meat from the bones. Discard the bones. Using 2 forks, shred the meat into small pieces. Stir the shredded meat into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain the pasta and place in a large serving bowl. Using a slotted spoon, remove the meat from the sauce and add to the pasta. Pour 1 cup of the sauce over the pasta. Toss well and thin out the pasta with more sauce, if needed. Sprinkle the pasta with Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley before serving.

Lowes, anyone?

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

You know, I like Home Depot. But after reading this article, I don’t like them so much any more.

When a Home Depot executive was told inventor Michael Powell might have a claim against the hardware giant for stealing an invention that keeps store employees safe, his reaction was swift and vulgar.

“(Expletive) Michael Powell,” the executive said. “Let him sue us.”

Nice.

The roughly $25 million judgment could have been avoided had the company agreed in 2004 to pay Powell the $2,000 he offered to charge for each device. That bill would have come to $4 million.

Instead, Hurley said, the firm dispatched workers to duplicate the saw guards Powell allowed them to test in eight stores in Georgia and California.

“It’s sad to say, but Home Depot literally organized a theft of the Powell invention,” he said.

So they flat out stole his invention, because they figured they were so big, their pockets so deep, that they could just steal it and “the little guy” would have no recourse.

What arrogance.

And boy did it cost them, and frankly it sounds like they deserve it.

Of course to pay for it, Home Depot is just going to pass along the costs to their customers by raising prices or other such things. I don’t feel like taking part in that, so I guess Lowes it is. Yes, sometimes I may still have to go to Home Depot… but maybe their execs will learn from this, I can always hope.