The biggest barrier between me and peace is my instinct to analyze why I didn’t, don’t, or might not have it. Stillness silences that instinct.
-Deschene
Month: May 2012
Public Lease Land Program
I had no idea Texas Park and Wildlife had a public lease land program.
Maybe it’s not water-into-wine stuff, but each year thousands of adults and children benefit from a state program that turns $48 into a license to hunt on thousands of acres of otherwise private property.
As any hunter can tell you, $48 won’t get much in the way of a hunting lease. And, if you don’t have a lease or a friend with a big ranch, you aren’t doing much hunting.
To help hunters and would-be hunters with this, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department began leasing property to open to public dove hunting by a special $48 permit. The impact has been significant: 30,000 people per year take advantage of it.
I need to look into this because it’d be pretty cool. According to the article they’re looking to expand the program to include things like feral hogs or rabbits and squirrels. And according to this flyer, perhaps also deer, pronghorn, and exotics.
Looks like this is a map of available areas.
I do recall something about a drawing system, but the article makes it sound like these are two different programs. I guess I’ll have to call to ask.
Why we’re losing
I can go check out the economic experiments in Chile or Hong Kong or Puerto Rico, stick a piece of plastic in the wall, and cash will come out. I can give that same piece of plastic to a stranger who doesn’t even speak my language, and he’ll rent me a car for a week. When I get home, Visa or MasterCard will send me the accounting— correct to the penny. That’s capitalism! I just take it for granted.
Government, by contrast, can’t even count votes accurately. Yet whenever there are problems, people turn to government. Despite the central planners’ long record of failure, politicians promise that this time they will “fix” health care, education, the uncertainty of old age, etc., and people believe. Few of us like to think the government that sits atop us, taking credit for everything and taking our money under threat of imprisonment, could really be all that rotten. And look at all the good things around us! What, besides our unique government, could have brought us such plenty?
But it’s not from the $3.8 trillion a year in spending, the 80,000 new pages of regulations a year, or even from democracy that we get such wonderful options as flexible contact lenses, Google, cellphones, increasing life spans, and so much food that even poor people are fat. We get those things from free markets. Government gets credit for good things even when it does little to bring them about.
– John Stossel, “Why We’re Losing” in Reason magazine’s June 2012 issue.
How does the saying go?
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, and I’ll continue re-electing the jackass?
As I read Stossell’s article, I couldn’t help but wonder why people keep turning to government for solutions? It doesn’t matter if you’re Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal, both of those groups do this very thing. They complain about how horrible government is when it comes to X, but then when they want Y they turn to government as if they think it will give it to them. Then Y gets all screwed up, and along comes time for Z and they keep going back for more.
I mean, most people seem to realize if a restaurant sucks and you get crappy service, you don’t go back. I don’t know people who would say “the food sucks, the wait staff was rude, the drinks way overpriced, but I’m making that my regular weekend hangout!”. But that’s precisely what happens when people keep turning to government to solve their problems.
I just don’t understand that behavior.
But maybe it’s that “definition of insanity” thing… where you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results?
On the flip side, we are surrounded by the successes of free market, of privatization, and yes I think Stossel’s above example of accounting is a perfect demonstration. Not to mention the computer or smartphone you’re reading this on. But I guess he’s right… we just take it for granted and so we don’t really realize what we’ve got.
And so… we’re losing.
Workouts? Not this week
After doing what I did to my lower back on Monday, I have opted to take the rest of the week off from the gym.
I felt better yesterday morning and I feel even better this morning, but it’s not totally gone. A steady diet of heat, stretching, foam rolling, and Aleve. 🙂 I figure there’s no reason to rush back into the gym. I’ll start fresh on Monday.
Meantime tho, I have opted to reset. I came up with new weight values, and I’ll start on these and start a fresh Wendler cycle on Monday. I debated adjusting my assistance weights, but given the back issues I will adjust those down too. Just adjust and reset everything. And if the weights are too light, put a little “dynamic effort” behind them.
Changes
I’ve been unhappy with my shooting recently.
It’s degraded.
Could it be due to lack of trigger time? Certainly.
Could it be due to my weightlifting? Yes I’ve thought this because my grip strength has changed dramatically and so I am gripping/squeezing the gun differently, what feels like “squeezing this much” isn’t the same grip pressure as before and so I’m having to refind what works.
Could it be due to switching to the M&P? I think so too. In fact just the other day I was noticing that I need more trigger finger on there than I previously thought. It’s a feel thing about the trigger under my finger. I’m not getting enough and thus I’m pressing the trigger “wrong”. A little more finger ends up working better.
But in the end I don’t know exactly what’s causing it, just that it’s there.
So I’ve been trying to dry fire more religiously, if nothing else just working on the press-out.
And then last night, something strange happened.
I guess because my eyes were tired, closing one eye had fatigued my eyes enough that things were getting blurry. So I started keeping both eyes open.
And it worked.
I’ve tried keeping both eyes open before, but it just hasn’t worked with my eyes. I’d try and try again, but it never clicked. I tried the things like putting some scotch tape over one eye on my glasses, but that never worked out and carried over to no tape.
But for some reason last night, I could dry fire with both eyes open.
I haven’t tried yet again this morning (still waking up), but I’m going to keep working at this. If I can drill it into my brain to have both eyes open, that would be awesome.
2012-05-14 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 9, squat 1
Ouch. In the bad way… ouch. 😦
“Week 1”
- WORK – Squat (working max: 280#)
- 2x5x45 (warmup)
- 1x5x115
- 1x5x140
- 1x3x170
- 1x5x185 (work)
- 1x5x215
- 1x5x240
- Asst. #2 – Crunches
- 5 x 10 x BW
- Foam Rolling
Today was bad.
When I got under the bar with the 240, I came up on rep 5 and my lower back said “fuck you”.
That was the end of the day. Well, I laid down on the floor and did some crunches. And glad I did. That let me know what happened.
See, just prior to getting under the bar for the 240, I twisted my torso. It’s a movement I do now and again to pop my lower back. It works quite nice. But sometimes it doesn’t quite reset things and I have to finagle around more to get things to reset right. That must have happened. I didn’t notice it, nothing felt out of whack. But I reckon something just out of whack because after my first set of crunches I stayed on the floor and did some other twisting and movements and got quite a nice pop as my lower back reset.
*sigh*
It hurts. I don’t think I did anything truly wrong, but time will tell.
The other thing? I can see by my performance this first week that yes in fact I need a reset. It stands to reason. I’m going to do the math and start the reset on Wednesday, but continuing with this cycle. That is, Wednesday will still be 3 reps, but at much lower weights. It’s time to fix stuff, because I want to be in this for the long haul.
But otherwise, the squats went quite well. I reread some Rippetoe last night and had a bunch of things about the squat fresh in my head. My other sets went really well, proper cues in my head, and I was pretty happy with my progress, until my back hated life. Ah well, it’s how it goes.
AAR – BP2 @ KR Training, 12 May 2012
This past Saturday’s KR Training time was just one class, Basic Pistol 2. What was different was the KR in KR Training wasn’t with us. Karl was taking a well-earned day off, so this class was being run by Tom Hogel and staffed with myself, Paul Martin, and Ed Vinyard.
Things went quite smooth. Twelve students of varying demographics and experience levels. Equipment was in pretty good shape too for this class. Usually we have a lot more people with problem equipment, but we had only one that I think is going to ditch his DA/SA gun for something like a Glock or M&P. We don’t have to convince people of this, they convince themselves. Once they have to really run their equipment, they find out how much it doesn’t work. It’s just good that guns have a fair resale value.
All in all, class went smooth. The recent cold fronts and rain gave us some great weather. And with a good group of students that came with minds open and ready to learn, we couldn’t ask for a better day.
Biggest thing to emphasize to those in the class? Slow down. Yes, you have to know that speed matters, but right now you need to be correct. You now understand proper technique, so now is the time to apply it. Don’t worry about speed, don’t worry about trying to go fast; worry about trying to be correct and do it right every time. That said, don’t waste time, don’t dawdle. Realize that speed will matter and is something to work towards, but for now, work on learning the motions and being correct.
FWIW, a new class called “Skill Builder” is starting and will be running fairly regularly. I’d recommend folks check this class out as a way to practice under the eye of an instructor, and also to gain assessment of where you are and need to go.
Finally… Karl left a new acquisition for us at the ranch to try out. An M&P-22. Man, that’s a fun gun! In most all respects it’s the same as a full-sized M&P, just in .22 caliber. From what I remember now as I write this, the backstraps were not interchangeable, I don’t recall how ambidextrous-friendly it is, and the gun does feel lighter in the hand which make sense since the barrel and slide can’t be as heavy. Oh, and I do recal the trigger was actually pretty decent and had a tactile reset! It was a lot of fun to shoot, and certainly would make for a good .22 pistol, either as a trainer alternative from your regular M&P or just as a .22 to have fun with. It did have some ammo-related problems, like failures to feed, failure to eject, stove pipes, and such, but we’re not sure if those were due to the gun or due to the ammo itself. Would need more testing to determine, and I’m sure we’ll have a line of people willing to test that out. Fun little gun!
Sunday Metal – Marilyn Manson
Yes, another Marilyn Manson. This time covering “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell.
I had no idea he did this cover (I’m not a huge Manson fan, just don’t follow him much) and this came up in the “related videos” when I did last week’s entry. Always liked the original song and this is a pretty good cover of it.
Apple TV or not?
Any of you have experience with the Apple TV?
I’ve been thinking about ditching cable, and the Apple TV seems rather compelling (Apple lifer that I am). For $99 I reckon there’s no harm in just buying one and trying it (first world problem, I know). Still, it’d be nice to get some input from folks that may have one.
Your input requested. 🙂
2012-05-11 workout – Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 9, bench press 1
Boy, this new template is tough.
“Week 1”
- WORK – Bench Press (working max: 230#)
- 2x5x45 (warmup)
- 1x5x95
- 1x5x115
- 1x3x140
- 1x5x150 (work)
- 1x5x175/li>
- 1x5x200
- Work Asst. – 1-Arm Dumbbell Rows (supersetted with work bench press)
- 5 x 10 x 70
- Asst. #1A – Bench Press
- 5 x 10 x 140
- Asst. #1B – Face pulls (supersetted with the asst. bench press)
- 5 x 12 x 65
- Asst. #2 – EZ Bar Curls
- 3 x 10/9/6 x 60
- Foam Rolling
This is tough. A lot more work than I expected it to be. I’m not sure if the back work during the work set is detracting from the bench work, but, that’s alright…. I’m suspecting based on how things are going that yes in fact I need to reset.
Let’s just leave it at that.
Stuff From Hsoi 