Steve Jobs passed away today.
If not for him, Apple wouldn’t be what it is… either then with things like the //e, later the Mac, Mac OS X, and of course the massive revolution that is the iPod and iPhone.
I know my life and career wouldn’t be the same, given how much Apple’s been a part of my life.
We’ll miss you Steve, but thank you for caring about “the rest of us”. We’ll keep on thinking differently.
The Austin Police Department’s Burglary Unit has set up a Facebook page. Why? To enlist the public’s help in locating victims of theft or burglary.
Starting Tuesday October 4th, 2011 the APD Burglary Unit will begin posting updates with recovered stolen property, surveillance videos, success stories of victims reunited with property, top property offenders, and crime alerts.
I think that’s pretty cool. If you’re on Facebook and in the Austin area, go Like the page.
Spent this past Saturday at KR Training helping with the Basic Pistol 1 and Beyond the Basics: Handgun classes.
Just realized I forgot to write up some things about the classes. 🙂
Basic Pistol 1
60% of the class was women. More and more women are interested in personal defense, and that’s A Good Thing™.
If you were in that class, I would like to suggest you come back for Basic Pistol 2. While BP1’s intent is to introduce firearms (safety, basic shooting technique, try lots of guns to see what they’re like) so you can make more informed choices at the gun store or at the rental range, it really isn’t able to teach enough of the fundamentals of shooting. That’s really where BP2 comes in, and just based on a few things we saw consistently in the class, BP2 would be useful for many of the students in that class.
Beyond The Basics: Handgun
This is not a high-speed-low-drag course. It’s not a defensive skills course. It’s a class designed to improve marksmanship, to improve fundamentals of sights and trigger, but especially “what you see”. Most people shoot in a manner where they always strive for that perfect sight picture on every shot, but you must realize that sort of sight picture isn’t always necessary. When targets are large and/or close, you can get away with seeing a lot less and having a less and ideal sight picture. When targets are small and/or far away, you generally need a closer-to-ideal sight picture. You can shoot those larger/closer targets faster, you need to shoot the smaller/further targets slower, to still get acceptable hits. And so, this class works on those skills, which are useful no matter what your shooting arena (defensive, action sports, etc.).
I’d like to refer students to a few things:
100 Round Practice. Print that up, take it to the range with you. You’ll get far more out of doing this than if you just go and throw 100 rounds downrange.
Wall Drill. This is a great dry-fire exercise to help you work on trigger control.
Group shooting. Shooting groups isn’t always fun, but it is challenging and will help you with your trigger control, sights, and follow through. The 100 Round Practice starts and ends with group shooting, and there’s good reason for that setup. Start shooting groups at 3 yards (no timer). Try 5 yards, 7 yards, 10, 15, 25. Don’t push yourself too hard too fast else you’ll just wind up frustrated and won’t progress. Just take whatever your comfort level is and go a step beyond that. If you’re shooting really tight groups at 3 yards, try moving to 7 yards. Or perhaps try shooting 3 yard groups but slightly faster yet striving to keep the group size the same (or smaller!).
Ball and Dummy. While you do your group shooting, mix a dummy round in there, to keep you honest. 🙂
F.A.S.T. test. You don’t have to shoot this drill as-is, merely use the target. Or, just use something like an index card and a large paper plate. The intent is to have multiple targets of different size. Shoot the circle then the rectangle. Shoot the rectangle then the circle. Shoot 1 and 1. Shoot 2 then 1. Shoot 3 then 2. It’s about transitioning, not just your eyes and gun from one target to another, but learning to manage your sight picture, how much (or little) you need to see, and the speed/cadence of your shooting. You can do this in dry practice too; won’t be quite the same as live fire since recoil management does enter into the equation, but you can still work it dry and gain some benefit.
Whatever you choose, don’t just go to the range and throw lead without any point. Sure, sometimes just going and shooting because it’s fun is the whole point and that’s fine. But if you wish to progress, you’ll need a plan to get there.
“Week 4” deload
Ah, deload week. My least favorite. 😉 But it’s good to let the body heal and recover. Not really much to say… it’s deloading, nothing exciting.
One thing I can comment on is a curiousity about supplementation. Since I’ve been looking at life insurance and of course that’s going to require a blood test and pee test, I need to ensure things look good. I don’t ingest anything questionable or illegal, but because of supplementation like creatine, that could make things look bad because insurance adjustors don’t really look at context, just actuary tables. I’m already going to be questionable because I lift weights, have more muscle than the average Joe, and thus on things like Body-Mass-Index tables I’m going to appear obese but I’m not, and obviously I exercise which you’d think is a good thing, but popular conception of “good exercise” is “long slow distance” and looking emaciated. Nevertheless, the insurance broker has been down this road and he suggested I just stop the supps for a bit to bring levels down because otherwise high levels of creatine could raise flags for things like kidney issues.
I’m not convinced my struggles in the assistance pressing today were due to lowered levels of creatine or the fact I’m not taking the Jack3d (mostly because it too contains creatine). But come 3rd set those last some reps were hard, and by the 5th set the last 5 reps were a struggle. It wasn’t this way last Press session, and I was the heavy session, and I even set a PR there. I will say, I didn’t rest the usual 2 minutes between sets during my “work” sets today because the weight was so minimal, so it could simply be that I truly had exhausted things. But it’s just a curiosity. I’m not sold on Jack3d, but I won’t be taking it at all during this deload. Once I finish this tub, I do have one more tub to go through. I’ll assess after that, but so far I’m not totally convinced… I would like to see more real science and not more “bro-science” behind the other ingredients (creatine is accepted, curious about beta-alanine, studies I’ve read are mixed).
We have a “defense dog”.
Or at least, I think that can be a good term to describe her.
She’s not an “attack dog”, both by breed nature and by well… this morning’s example.
Every few years, Austin Energy comes around to trim trees away from the power lines. This morning was our day, and they’d need to get into the backyard to have access to some trees. I knew the guys were out front, but they were still finishing breakfast (as far as I knew). Sasha had been wanting to go out and I figured one last pee break would be a good thing. I went into the backyard to check, saw no one, went back to the door to let Sasha out… she zoomed out the door, and by the time I turned around she was barking and going nuts.
It seems, by sheer coincidence of timing, that the moment I let her out was the same moment the tree workers decided to open the fence gate and come into the backyard! ¡Ay dios mio!
Sasha barked big and hard, but she didn’t rush the workmen. She barked, made aggressive “go away!” posturing, but was constantly fading back as if to assess the situation and buy herself time while things unfolded and she could determine where things were going (Kuvasz are smart dogs, they think). I know the workmen had the daylights scared out of them so there was certainly no posturing on their part, certainly retreat and signs of not just submission but “OH SHIT!” 🙂 Within seconds I was between them, ordered the workmen to leave the backyard, and was able to snap the leash onto Sasha with little trouble and get her back inside.
Once inside, I went to explain things to the workmen, and of course they had questions, like if she’d bite. And this is where I came up with “defense dog”.
You see, if we have the time to explain things to people, we can explain that she’s a Kuvasz, that the breed is a livestock guardian dog, that their demeanor is not to attack but rather to control the intruder, keep them away from the flock, pose and posture looking as big and scary as possible, all in an effort to scare the intruder away. They don’t want to attack, they don’t want to chase (because then they’d leave the flock, undefended, unprotected), but if attack is the only remaining option then so be it because protecting the flock is their job, what they are programmed to do.
But you see, that’s a mouthful. We’ve been searching for ways to describe and explain Sasha to others in a manner that’s brief, concise, yet accurate. That would explain what she’s like, and why we got her (in particular). To say “defense dog” I think can work, because that’s what she is. She is NOT an attack dog, she was not gotten to hurt anyone, to be aggressive to anyone. Kuvasz are there to defend the flock, and that’s why we got her… kinda rolls with the whole personal defense Lt. Col Grossman “sheepdog” paradigm.
So we’ll see how the term goes. My hope is that it’s enough to explain it, but that people will be likely unfamiliar with the term (and I expect they’ll be familiar with the “attack dog” term and will probably make a quick mental connection there that should make them go “huh?”) and then perhaps they’ll ask for more detail. Hopefully it’ll work. 🙂
DR PERFORMANCE PRACTICE DECK FOR iOS NOW AVAILABLE
The New Digital Way to Practice for Practical Shooting Sports
AUSTIN, TX (October 4, 2011) — To help answer the question “What should I practice?”, DR Performance Shooting andHsoi Enterprises LLC announce the availability of the DR Performance Practice Deck for iOS™. Consisting of 52 basic shooting drills superimposed on a normal deck of playing cards, the deck allows you to have a thorough, fun, and effective practice session, now conveniently available on your Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
For complete information, visit the Hsoi Enterprises blog.
This is what I’ve been working on for the past some months and it’s finally here.
Please share and spread the word! Thank you!
My name is John Daub.
If you search for “John Daub” online, you’re most likely to encounter me or John Daub, President of Weblish, a Japanese company that started as an online school but has become a media company. John and I don’t know each other, but we’ve crossed paths before for obvious reasons. 🙂 One thing that I also find amusing is we’re both of similar ethnic background, being part Asian then this rather “white German” name.
I follow John on Twitter and the other day he tweeted about this video: Jason gets mugged!
Go watch.
Now note, this is a lesson on causative verbs, like “make”, “have”, “let”, and “get”. So don’t put much stock into what I’m about to say. I found the video fun and silly, and certainly a good storyline for such a language lesson.
But as I watched, I couldn’t help but think about the mugging scenario. How it unfolded, how Jason handled the mugging, especially when it came to the defense of Olga. How would THIS John Daub — living in Texas, not Japan — would have handled things much differently.
Can you guess what I would have done differently in this video?
I wouldn’t have worn panty hose on my head. 🙂
The Highlander and Kurgan may have respected holy ground, but criminals do not.
Recently, Rangemaster instructors Tom Givens, Cecil Booker, and Steve Palmer attended a full day seminar for church security teams from around the country. There were some very interesting blocks of instruction from various law enforcement and church organizations.
One of the points that really stood out was how little public awareness exists of this problem. As one of the pastors of a large church stated, many churches refuse to report crimes against them, or try hard to keep them quiet for fear of scaring the members from attending services and other church functions. Despite this, reported serious incidents at churches have increased by 200% in just the past five years.
According to a spokesman from the Sheriff’s Department’s Homeland Security office, since January 1999 there have been 473 major incidents in US churches, resulting in over 200 fatalities. These range from mentally ill persons assaulting or killing pastors to religion-based hate crimes. Robbery accounted for 27% of the serious incidents, since churches are known to have cash on hand, especially during services. In those 473 incidents, 596 people were killed or seriously injured.
This serves as a reminder that violence can occur wherever there are people. Thinking one is “safe” just because one is in a house of worship is naïve. You are safe where you make yourself safe, and nowhere else. Discretely conceal your personal emergency safety equipment and have it on you at all times. That is really the only way to actually have it when the need suddenly arises.
From the October 2011 Rangemaster Newsletter.
No PR today, but improvement (and a realization).
“Week 3” 5/3/1
No PR today, but that’s expected given the reset I did back on PPNP Novice. And I didn’t do as well as I wanted to, only getting 4 reps. I will say, my form is improving and that was really the big issue that’s been hitting me all along in the squats is my form. I even re-watched Rippetoe’s “Starting Strength” DVD last night, the squat section, to put some cues back in my head. Watching it was useful because I picked up on things that I missed the last time around. It’s also interesting to work to reconcile what he talks about vs. what guys like Wendler, Tate, and Wenning talk about with squats.
Here’s the thing: I have a mental block. I make no bones about not liking to squat, and I think it’s due in part to years of baggage that squats are going to hurt or kill me. The reality is bench pressing is far more dangerous and a failed bench is going to hurt you a lot more than a failed squat. Nevertheless, the mental block remains. I’m getting over it, but like anythin with years of mental baggage it’s going to take a while. I think I could have gotten 5 reps, maybe 6, if I was attacking the weights and didn’t have that shred of mental doubt. I felt my form start to falter, and I should have just went for working the movement, push the weight up even if the form slipped a bit. But I didn’t want to risk hurting myself or dumping the bar (I should care about hurting myself, I shouldn’t care about dumping the bar), and so my brain bailed and that was that… 4 reps, uncertainty killed me. *sigh*
I’m getting better, but I know I’ve got a long ways to go to get over it. One thing I’ll watch to see is how the next cycle goes. I’ll bump to 230 and 230 was where I stopped last time because while I was moving it, my form was horrible so I backed off, then switched to 5/3/1, so it’s been slow to get back. But the slow progress was good because my form, while still improving, has improved. I don’t feel my quads doing all the work, I do feel my hams and glutes and other parts of my posterior chain getting worked hard, so that’s good. I’m slowly finding my groove, where to position my body, how everything should come together. So, slow but sure I’m getting there.
The assistance squatting actually helps a great deal here. I’m glad I went to 95# because it’s working me hard, but not so hard that I slip up on form…. it hurt today at the end of it all, and I appreciated that. Getting more reps, more time under the bar on squats, it’s helping me really track my form.
On curls, 50# finally felt like it was pushing me. I’ll go to 55# next workout, even tho it’s a deload week.
And yes, deload starts. I don’t like deloading, but I know it’s critical so I do it. Just like squatting. 🙂
Kyuss – “Green Machine”
Stuff From Hsoi 