Month: February 2011

What’s that white stuff?!?!?!

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Holy crap.

It snowed in Austin!

It’s the apocalypse!

It must be like… a whole half-inch out there! of dry powder too!

And so, the city comes to a screeching halt. I’m seeing that all the school systems are cancelling school for today. Various work places are telling their employees to not come in.

My kids are homeschooled. I work from home. Life just chugs on for us, no break. This is one of those times where you debate the merits of being so home-based. I mean, “this close” to a 3-day weekend. 😉

See, I spent most of my life in places that got lots of snow. The blizzard hitting most of the US right now? THAT would be cause to shut things down for maybe just a day until the plows and sand trucks did their thing, and you spent all day applying shovel to driveway while the kids made forts and snowmen. Then you got on with life.

So I heave a sigh when we get this dusting and the place shuts down. People in Chicago are laughing at us. But then, probably a good thing to keep all the transplanted Californian’s off the road here, since they don’t know how to drive in snow.

In related news, Sasha the wonderdog is loving the snow (unlike some dogs). Just wait for July oh fuzzy girl….

I’m entering the Terrible Two’s

/ hsoi

I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since I started blogging.

I still strive to post at least one thing every day. Some days are more challenging than others, but it’s still a good exercise. I’ve certainly seen readership and traffic increase, which I still find interesting.

I mean, what is it that you people find so interesting that you keep reading and keep coming back to read again? 🙂  I’m no one special, I just write because it’s fun.

Yeah, I suppose I should post blog stats, but that doesn’t matter that much because there’s only so much you can tell. I will admit, the one thing I am curious about is how many actual regular readers I have. I know I have a lot, and most never speak up, which is fine. But that is one curiosity to me. Again, not just for the pure number, but geez… why do y’all keep coming back. 😉   Not that I want you to go — please don’t — but more just wondering what’s the appeal because, like I said, I’m no one special.

But I admit, if I didn’t have readers, it’d be hard to keep going. While yes I do this for me, on those days when I just don’t feel like writing something, having some external motivation helps.

So thank YOU for the two years. 🙂

I won’t prognosticate about the blog’s future because there’s no point in that. Just one day at a time, one post at a time.

And again, thank you.

Fragility and preparedness

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

One thing that our wonderful modern life in the United States does? It insulates us and isolates us from reality.

Sometimes that’s good – because ignorance truly is bliss and I’m sorry but every so often we all need ways to not burden (or unburden) our minds and hearts of stuff. But for the most part, ignorance and isolation isn’t promoted as a successful long-term life-strategy.

The US is being hit by a pretty major winter storm. Temperatures here in Austin are in the teens overnight not getting above freezing during the day. I know to a lot of my northern friends sitting at sub-zero (Fahrenheit) temperatures right now, but for this area of the country this is unusually harsh.

What makes it worse? State-wide in Texas they had rolling blackouts yesterday and are predicting more for today. Why?

Burst water pipes at two coal-fired power plants forced them to shut down, triggering rolling power cuts across the state, the lieutenant governor said Wednesday.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said this is something that “should not happen.”

Dewhurst said he was told that water pipes at two plants, Oak Grove and Sand Hill, forced them to cut electricity production.

Natural gas power plants that should have provided backup had difficulty starting due to low pressure in the supply lines, also caused by the cold weather.

That’s right, it shouldn’t have happened. But it did. Why did it happen? Looks like some combination of accidents, technical reasons, and perhaps poor planning.

I’m not here to point fingers, but rather to point out. To point out just how fragile our modern system is. Look at the uprising in Egypt and how instantly all Internet access was cut off. I recall a couple of years ago I was teleconferencing with the home office in California when everything went down. Turns out that some vandals severed the network cables and took out entire towns of phone, Internet, you name it (except radio), all of those cables went through a single manhole and left cities without access to emergency services. Part of the design intent of the Internet is if something goes down it’ll continue to route around to find its destination, but we have too many single-point bottlenecks such that when they go down it is a major problem.

We take much for granted, because we’re blissfully ignorant and unaware of how everything works and is put together. How the very fabric of our society is that fragile and untenable. Redundancy and backup solutions are good, but even those can fail. In the end, we’re humans, living with human constructs… mistakes will be made, things will fail. Best we can do is be prepared not for if they will happen, but when they will happen.

Cabela’s NRA Weekend

/ hsoi

Cabela’s is having their NRA weekend starting tomorrow (Friday Feb. 4) through Sunday.

I’m trying to find details on what will be going on, because they make it sound like there will be events and activities. Unfortunately I can’t find any specifics. *sigh*

I do know there are some discounts for NRA members. And if you’re not an NRA or TSRA member, I’m pretty sure you can sign up this weekend. You really should.

I need to head there myself. Got a few things to pick up, including some more 12 gauge dummy rounds. Started watching Magpul Dynamic’s “The Art of the Dynamic Shotgun” and I want to work on their reload techniques.

You’re uneasy? How about us?

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

But Texas senators, still a bit edgy about whether security at the domed Statehouse is tight enough, huddled behind closed doors Tuesday to discuss what else can be done — even after several million dollars have been spent making the Capitol secure.

Full story.

“I’m not a big supporter of having metal detectors at the Capitol,” said Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen . “If someone wants to shoot a senator or a lawmaker or someone else, they can do it after we leave the building at night. All this security is more of an inconvenience to the general public than anything, in my opinion.”

NB: Sen. Hinojosa has an A+ grade from the NRA — not all Democrats are anti-gun. And he’s right: what good is all this security at the Capitol building? What happens when you leave the building?

And that’s a key thing to consider. Why is there security at one building? What are you supposed to do outside that building? You know…. like the rest of us citizens. What makes those people within those walls worthy of greater protection? Why is their life more important than the life of my child?

 

…questions linger about the new Capitol security, which allows anyone with a concealed handgun license to bypass security screening at the doors.

Because guns are allowed in the Capitol for the first time, some senators have questions about what their staffs should do if someone with a gun comes into their office. What should lawmakers do if someone pulls a gun in the gallery during a session?

 

 

The interesting thing is the article demonstrates the ignorance of the lawmakers. They didn’t know about the cell phone alert service, they didn’t know about the buttons in the committee rooms that can summon assistance… and it’s obvious they don’t know that CHL-holders are good, law-abiding people. Yes, any group can have a bad apple, but on the whole CHL-holders are more law-abiding than the rest of the citizenry (yes we have data, search my blog because I’ve posted it numerous times before).

So what do you do if someone with a gun comes into your office? Well, where is that gun? If it’s like most CHL-holders, we’ll have it in a holster, on our belt, and hidden away. You’ll never know, and so what you can do is just go about your business like you do every day.

But if someone opts to go crazy well…. you could consider shooting back. I know many lawmakers have CHL’s and carry on the legislative floor. Or, you could be like the rest of the sheep and cower and wait to die. Fight or die, your choice.

The Capitol building should be like any other public ground: open and free, equal to all. It doesn’t have any special powers to ward off evil. Evil can happen there just like it happens in parking lots and sidewalks. If you care about your personal safety, take responsibility for yourself and be pro-active in what you can do about it.

 

Emotional Updraft

/ hsoi

 

It’s amazing what love can do.  There is nothing that lifts us up more.  In times of trouble, when somebody loves you, it brings healing.  The more love the better.  We know this, but strangely, somehow it often seems illusive.  We want to love and be loved, but it can be so hard to do.

 

 

Continue reading at The Climbing Up Blog…

 

New Lazarus A.D.

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

The new Lazarus A.D. album “Black Rivers Flow” is out NOW.

Go. Buy. Now.

Here’s track #2 from the album, “The Ultimate Sacrifice”. Not an official video per se, more a promo they released prior to now. Hopefully some official videos will come soon.

It crushes. It also has some unexpected things. It’s still very Lazarus, but you can tell there’s more maturing in the songwriting, in the performance, in the studio work too.

Go. Buy. Now.

They’ll be in Austin (with D.R.I.!!) on the 14th. Uh.. Valentine’s Day, and I wish to remain a happily married man. No show for me. 😉

Suddenly, everything turned black and white

/ hsoi

I guess the cold front just blew in…. with a vengence.

Rain coming down.

Sustained 20MPH+ winds, gusts are well over 40MPH and forecast up to 55MPH.

If I end up “over the rainbow”, you’ll know why. 🙂

Mossberg Shotguns and drop safety

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I have a Mossberg 500 shotgun.

I wanted to know if it was drop-safe.

I turn to Mossberg’s website; I see nothing there addressing the matter.

I turn to Google. A mixed bag of results where the only the conclusion is: no one knows but everyone thinks they do. It also makes you realize that no one took the time and effort to go to the horse’s mouth and find out. Well, I found one guy that did, but he sent an email, didn’t word it right, and due to that wording he didn’t really get the question answered.

Time to pick up the phone.

I sat on hold for a while. A long while. Man… their hold music is… terrible. 🙂

But once I got someone on the phone, I asked if their shotguns are drop safe. Yes they are. All of them, across their entire line. I asked “so I have one in the pipe and drop it on the concrete from 3-4′ up and it’ll be fine? won’t fire?” “Yes, sir”.

So there you go. At least today, according to the rep that I spoke with on the phone, all Mossberg shotguns are drop safe.

Rangemaster Feb. 2011 newsletter

/ hsoi

Rangemaster’s Feb. 2011 newsletter is up for your enjoyment.

There are a lot of good articles in this one, especially the in-depth article about gun fit and ensuring you pick a gun that fits your hand best. The notion of “finger bicep” is a good one… read the article to know what that refers to.

I wanted to reprint one article from the newsletter:

 

On Christmas Eve in Memphis, a man whose initials were CB (name withheld for family’s sake) brought a semiautomatic pistol to the kitchen table. Apparently intending to clean it, he ejected the cartridge from the chamber, then removed the magazine, and put the gun on the

table. His wife, who was also in the kitchen, told him to put the gun away. In the process of picking it up, he swept his wife with the muzzle, which prompted a sharp response from her.

He protested that he had just unloaded the gun and it was therefore harmless. He said to his wife, “If it was dangerous, would I do this?” He then put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. Of course, since he unloaded it incorrectly, it discharged, killing him on the spot. His funeral was Monday, Dec 27 in Halls, Tn.

I would be willing to bet a week’s pay that CB had never had any formal training with handguns, but “grew up around guns”. Here at the school we hear that constantly from ignorant people who don’t know how much they don’t know. If you have friends and relatives who own handguns and have “been around guns all their lives” urge, cajole, and berate them into getting some formal handgun training. This type of incident is entirely preventable.