Month: February 2013

Support Raw Milk

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

Why is it so burdensome to obtain raw milk?

I like Sand Creek Farm. They run a top-notch operation with delicious milk. But if I want their milk, I have to drive 2 hours to get it. Here in Texas, that’s the only way I can get it. Oh sure, they come into Austin fairly often and could deliver it or have some other sort of distribution, like at the local farmer’s market or maybe a private person has their home as a drop-point, like we can do with our vegetables from Johnson’s Backyard Garden. So if we can do this with our veggies, why not milk?

Why deny the small farmer a way to support their farm and their family?

Why deny the willing consumer a way to get the products they want? Or if not deny, make it such a burden to obtain?

So why is raw milk so denied?

I reckon it’s to “keep us safe”. Fine, if that’s what it is to be… and not large mass dairy farmers trying to use legislative muscle to protect their turf. But raw milk in and of itself is fine; usually problems arise in the processing, such as if the milking machinery or bottling process was unsanitary. How long would a family farm stay in business if they held themselves to low standards of sanitation and product quality? How long would it be until the lawsuits drowned them if someone became sick or died? It’s very much in the best interest of the farmer to make a high-quality and safe product. In fact, building such a reputation only serves to build the business too.

Funny thing, that.

BTW, why raw milk in the first place? The current nutritional zeitgeist is to be as “close to nature” as possible; zero to little processing, as straight-up as you can get it. Thus raw milk. Yes, I was very wary at first, but gallons later and boy if it’s not good. And you know what’s best?

I can drink it, and I don’t turn into a farty mess. They’re still not sure what exactly is behind this, but people eating raw milk and raw cheeses and other raw dairy products just don’t have the… uh… intolerance problems… that you get from processed dairy.

I support 83(R) HB 46. No it’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

 

Awesome

/ hsoi

Little girl hears Bad Brains for the first time.

I guess Bad Brains will be going on tour this summer with The Wiggles, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Laurie Berkner. 🙂

I love the “turn it up a little bit” comment she makes at the end. Rawk!  It’s something I love about (small/young) kids: they have no pretension, no preconceived notions, no hang-ups, and are just honest about life and love.

 

First LaRue, now Olympic

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

First LaRue Tactical says what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Now Olympic Arms follows suit, and does one better.

And they’re pretty much right:

This action has caused a division of the people into classes: Those the government deems valuable enough to protect with modern firearms, and those whose lives have been deemed as having less value, and whom the government has decided do not deserve the right to protect themselves with the same firearms. Olympic Arms will not support such behavior or policy against any citizen of this great nation.

And I agree with their final statement:

Olympic Arms invites all firearms manufacturers, distributors and firearms dealers to join us in this action to refuse to do business with the State of New York. We must stand together, or we shall surely fall divided.

So come on industry people. You got the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show cancelled . Imagine if no firearms company wanted to do business with the State of New York (or California, given bills currently in their legislature… or Colorado, just ask Magpul). What would it be like? The police would be without firearms, without ammunition, without duty gear, without anything. Should they reap what they sow?

2012-02-12 training log

/ hsoi

Yes… Tuesday.

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 17, week 1

  • Work Set – Bench Press (working max: 230#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x95
    • 1x5x115
    • 1x3x140
    • 1x5x150 (work)
    • 1x5x175
    • 1x8x200
  • Assistance – Bench Press
    • 5 x 10 x 135/135/135/120/100
  • Assistance – Pull-ups (band assisted)
    • 5 x 7/7/7/7/5 x BW
  • Assistance – Stuff
    • Flat Bench DB Flies
    • JM Press
    • Hammer Curls
    • 3 sets, 8-15 reps, enough weight to make it hard

First things first: I went on Tuesday. Why? I’m going to try 4x week. The Wendler 5/3/1 program is traditionally a 4x week program, tho you can adopt it for other layouts. I’ve done 3x week out of schedule, but schedule is different and I must admit… between the CBL and this crazy itch to hit the weights a lot (addiction?!?!?!) I figure what the hey, try 4x. There was a time I did 2x and it was NOT workable for me; I think I didn’t hit the “training adaptation curve” just right and I think 2x was too much… basically I was doing things only once a week and I think it was too long between sessions. So hey, in the name of science and finding what works for me, let’s try 4x week. Yes, this was a whim; opted to do it last night before I went to bed. Or maybe it was just an excuse so I could down a bowl of ice cream before bed. 😉

On my work set, I worked hard at my grip and arms. I have read about how you should “break the bar”, but I guess I misinterpreted it. When they said “pull the bar apart” I took it to mean like I was pulling it such that it would stretch the bar like taffy. I read something last night from Spud (If I can find the article again I’ll post it) that lead me to think that instead it’s more like well… like the strongman trying to bend a steel rod into a U-shape? Like that. That does seem to activate the lats more, the triceps more AND also cause the upper arms to tuck more. So hey…. maybe that’s the thing? So I focused on that. That I hit 8 reps with 200 was pretty cool. When I look at past progress, I’ve certainly done more than that, but this is with my new technique. Plus, last cycle was 195 for 7, so 1 more rep and 5# more? Heck, alright!

Trouble is, I noticed while I was focusing so much on the grip technique, I totally lost my leg drive! Feet were on the floor, but there was no drive. So I opted to set the swiss bar aside for the assistance benching and instead just do some light benching for my 5×10 assistance work so I could focus on technique and experiment. I did some stuff with my feet that I think may be closer to finally a good position. I sit, feet/legs are at right angles. Most importantly, my feet/knees/legs are closer together than they would normally be if I just sat down. Furthermore, ensure my feet/toes are pointed straight ahead, instead of the slight toe-out cant that normally happens. When I do this, I can get a hell of a lot of drive and stability. I still need to tweak it, but yeah, this might finally be the road to my leg drive platform.

Anyways, everything else just chugged along. I am not going to do the “drop sets” at the end of things because I’m expecting I have enough work and with 4x week well, why push my luck eh?

So far so good!

Realizing your potential, as a developer

/ hsoi

Maybe that I’m a graybeard programmer means I’ve finally realized my potential as a programmer.

I’m reading this list of “10 Reasons Why You’re Failing to Realize Your Potential as a Developer“, and I’m just nodding my head the whole time. I’m going to add my own comments to the author’s “10 reasons”, so you should read the original article first.

1.  You’re too afraid of failure to learn new tools / languages / frameworks.

I’m not sure it’s fear of failure as to why people don’t want to learn other stuff. It may be as simple as having a comfort zone and wanting to stay there. It may be that they have a cushy job and want to keep it (maybe fear of losing job). There may be business reasons.

He’s right tho, that people are afraid of throwing away all those years of investment in X. The reality is, you are and you aren’t. You may well throw out a specific set of languages or frameworks, but so what? After you’ve learned enough languages, another is “just another language”. After you’ve learned enough frameworks, it’s “just another framework”. A lot of the concepts and approaches carry over, and it’s those things that matter more. You have a larger set of experience to draw from to solve a problem, to create an architecture, to see a flaw or a risk before it becomes too costly. Those things are far more important than you silly language wars.

It’s good to learn more languages, to learn more frameworks. The more you know, the  more cool stuff you can do, and ultimately the more valuable you can be. That said, be sure to acquire depth in those areas. Having a list of languages a mile long doesn’t mean much if you can’t actually be useful in those languages can can’t speak to the depth of what they offer.

2. You won’t push your commits until the feature is “done.” (It’s never done!)

I think this is “fear of what others think” or “fear of judgment” or “fear of criticism”. That people won’t think you’re a god, or that you’re stupid for how you’ve done things. This is a reasonable fear. We’re human, we have egos. The geek and programmer are held up as some sort of wicked smart superman and the exception is taken to be the rule. It also doesn’t help that there’s often someone on the team that doesn’t know the meaning of the word “tact” or even “polite” when looking at someone else’s code. We basically always think the guy before us was a moron and can’t believe they wrote such stupid code!

Screw it.

You will write stupid code. You will write imperfect code. Your code will have bugs. You are human. You are learning. You will do the best you can at the time you can with what resources you have. I find this is where comments are useful because they can expose the hidden “why” behind something. Maybe you have to write an ugly hack, but at least the comment can explain why you had to do it (because we had to ship right now else lose a multi-million dollar contract and the company would have closed up and none of this would have mattered then). It may not excuse the choice of hack, but at least it becomes understandable.

Just commit, often and early. In the long run it will suit you better because you’ll need to roll back or have a good checkpoint, so your workflow is better served by doing that. And in the end it really doesn’t matter WHEN you commit your code, because we’re always going to think it’s wrong and wonder what moron wrote it. 😉

3. You know just enough to be dangerous.

I’ll just say you need to read and understand, before you do.

Sometimes you have to “do” in order to fully understand. If so, take time on the side to write a small project that allows you to fully explore and come to understand it. Often tho, a little sample project isn’t enough and you just have to drop it into the larger more complex context to really grok it. But then this goes back to #2, where you should commit often and early, so we can follow what happened and unwind it when something bad happens.

4. Analysis paralysis.

This is a tough one, and one that only comes with time and experience. Plus, it’s different for each person.

You cannot sit there and analyze all day, but you must analyze and research some. If you don’t understand what you’re doing, then you only know enough to be dangerous and we come back to point #3. Or you risk going in half-baked and everything gets fucked worse than before.

But you also cannot sit there and just analyze it to death. Sometimes you just have to dive in. But then it goes back to #2. Commit often. Heck, make a branch, maybe a branch of that branch, whatever you have to do. Sometimes getting in there and poking at it is the only way.

There’s a balance to be had, and ultimately you just have to find it. Never lose sight of the fact you have to ship, because you need to make money, because you need to get paid and pay bills and such. So if nothing else, let that be a motivator to keep going, just don’t rush it.

5. You don’t invest in your tools or development process.

This is a pretty good one.

I’ll just add that scripting has been one of the things that has helped me. Eventually I’ll recognize a task that I perform often (enough) and takes (enough) time. I’ll also see the task is one that tends to be the same thing over and over, or maybe almost the same with just some small variation of input. That sounds like a perfect candidate for automation! So maybe it takes me a day or two to come up with a script or other mechanism to automate it. Fine. But now it’s a simple execution of the script and viola, the thing is done. Or the thing can churn in the background without my tending to it, and I can go tend to other things. In the end, I get more done in less time.

How does the saying go? “Efficiency is intelligent laziness.”

6. You’re too embarrassed to ask for help.

Don’t be. You don’t know it all.

On the same token, don’t be an asshole when someone comes to you for help. If someone comes to you for help, they are in need and believed you to be the best person to aid them. Help them, and don’t be a dick about it. And yes, that includes things like LMGTFY, or just saying “RTFM” or “did you use the search feature” or other shit like that. There are ways to help people become more self-sufficient, but being condescending isn’t one of them.

7. You don’t know how to make it easy for other programmers to work with your code.

Your code will outlive you. As well, once you have written code, it will have to be maintained… often by you, and chances are 6 months from now you won’t remember what the hell you were thinking when you wrote it.

Write clear code, clean code. Yes sometimes architectures have to be obtuse or complex. So document them. Explain them to others. Be sure to share the knowledge.

8. You don’t know how to read someone else’s code (or don’t want to.)

This goes back to #7, that you should make it easier for people to read your code. In fact, it goes back to #2, because you should be pushing your code to others and soliciting their feedback. Code review is good.

Granted, we shouldn’t get hung up on coding styles and coding standards, because someone’s will always be different from yours. So you need to learn how to read their “dialect” and forge ahead.

9. You can’t code from the end-user’s point of view (you think too small.)

This this this, so very much THIS.

We must always remember who we are coding this for. When I write a script (#5), I’m usually writing it for myself so if it’s quick and dirty, that’s fine. So long as I can make it go that’s all that matters. If it fails along the way, that’s OK because I can fix it. But if I was to make that same “automated task solution” work for someone else, I’d probably have to make it cleaner, clearer, I might have to put a GUI on it, make it more robust in the face of failure, etc..  It’s the same basic solution, but because of the audience the specifics and the end product are different.

We do not reside in an ivory tower. We must realize that we are generally not the audience and our take on things isn’t often the way it should be done. It was one then when I worked for Metrowerks, being a developer writing tools for developers, so often we could use our assumptions and biases and turn out the right features and approaches. But when I wrote Spring Cleaning and was writing an app to make life easier for non-tech-savvy people, that affected everything and directed how even things as simple as error messages must be written.

But also, don’t let this get you arrogant. I often hear that the customer doesn’t know what they want and so we must give it to them. Actually, customers often do understand what they want, but they have a hard time articulating what they want and may not know how to articulate it. But often they will know it when they see it. Thus it becomes OUR job not as a programmer but as a designer, as an architect, to learn how to draw this out of the end user. To step back, to see the larger trends, the directions, and the problems faced by our end users and then see how we can solve them to give them a solution that not only gives them what they want but in a way that’s better than they expected.

This isn’t easy, and it’s nothing a novice can do. But it’s a position for the novice to strive for.

10. You aren’t able to judge the business value of any programming task.

I will never forget Doug D.. Doug was a manager I had early on in my career. I was this idealistic programmer that enjoyed my ivory tower. I wanted to write perfect code, and do great things as a programmer.  Doug helped me realize that while that’s all good, there’s business to think about. It’s simple. Money has to be made. There has to be money to pay my salary, to keep the lights on, to pay my salary, to put Mountain Dew in the fridge, to pay my salary, to keep the business floating so we can keep our ivory tower alive and going to even bother with any of this code. If there’s no money, none of this stuff matters and our ivory tower of ideal programming goes away. So you have to look at the business side of things. You have to keep perspective. And sometimes yes, you have to not do something, you have to leave some task, adjust priorities, or even sometimes take a hack approach instead of a clean architecture. There’s just realities of business. Many times it may lead to ugly things that are more painful to recover from down the road, but that’s life… at least you stuck around long enough to have that longer road instead of having to pull up stakes miles and years back to find a new home.

Nothing will be perfect. We have to find balance and constantly juggle priorities.

Just don’t forget to grow and have fun along the way. 🙂

2013-02-11 training log

/ hsoi

So why DID I run out of gas?

Wendler 5/3/1 program, cycle 17, week 1

  • Work Set – Squat (working max: 295#)
    • 2x5x45 (warmup)
    • 1x5x120
    • 1x5x150
    • 1x3x180
    • 1x5x195 (work)
    • 1x5x225
    • 1x7x255 (rep PR?)
  • Assistance – Squat
    • 3 x 10 x 145
  • Assistance – RDL
    • something… see below
  • Assistance – Pulldown Abs
    • 3 x 15 x 120 (hold 1 sec at peak of each rep)

I was exhausted. My brain was screaming, wanting to do more, but my body just couldn’t move. I’m not sure why. Was it because I cranked like hell during squats? Was it because of CBL? Some other third thing? I don’t know.

On the squat work set, I worked hard. I pulled out 7 reps with 255. Last cycle week 1 was 7 reps at 245. Cycle 15 week 2 had 2 reps at 255. Cycle 14 was week 3 getting 3 reps at 255. As I keep flipping back, even to cycle 13 which holds my current squat PR (3×280)… I busted out more reps today than I have. So fuck yeah. But I had to work for it. I MIGHT have gotten 8 reps if I really felt like pushing it, but it would have been a gut buster and that’s not the point of work sets.

So then my assistance squatting. Recall that I’m trying to make every rep to be awesome form. This is the time to really focus on form. In fact, today was a huge focus on form. Didn’t plan on it, but it happened. I didn’t care so much about my lower body, just get into a stance that felt right. My upper body tho…. I worked HARD on keeping it tight, “inflated”, my lats were flared hard with every rep (well, I tried to… I would get tired, notice they were loosening up, then tighten then back up). I worked HARD at every rep. It was 10 sets of 1 rep, not 1 set of 10 reps. It wasn’t about pushing through just to get to 10, letting shit falter, letting the bigger stronger muscles do the work just to crank out the required number of reps. No, every rep was a reset. Every rep was the same (or greater) mental intensity. I wanted my weakest muscles to be involved and failing first, so I could make them stronger. And I’ll tell you… 3 sets of assistance work was enough. I was tapped.

Thus when I started the Romanian Deadlifts, it didn’t work out. I had no idea where to start, so 135 on the bar and off I went. But after about 6-8 reps I stopped. I wasn’t getting much depth before my back would fail. I tried a second time with 95 on the back — I’m learning the movement, better to be lighter. But even that was bad. Basically, my lower back was tapped out… just flat out exhausted and that’s not a recipe for learning a new movement. So after 2 sets I cashed it in and just did some high-rep leg curls — my hams needed something!

Also on the squats, I’m falling forward out of the hole. But you know what I noticed? The squat rack at the gym doesn’t face a mirror, but it does face a window. In the early morning, when it’s black outside, the window is basically a mirror… and I see myself. I have an old EliteFTS troubleshooting article and one of the cue points for falling forward is to NOT squat in front of a mirror. I noticed today that I was looking down… I was doing alright, because when I told myself to look up/forward, I saw myself and I think that fucked with my head. I can’t change the gym much here, but I have two thoughts 1. look to see if I can find something to put in front of the window so I stare at nothing, 2. close my eyes. I think I might try closing my eyes because I know that also puts me more in tune with what my body is doing. Could be interesting to try.

Anyways tho, I was happy at the intensity of the squat session. Sure the weights are far from elite, but it was a tough session for me. I was worked hard. I didn’t realize how I beat a bunch of rep records until I got home and looked at my spreadsheet. That’s alright.

If you’re not strong, you’re weak

/ hsoi

At a certain point as a lifter and athlete, as a worker or professional, as a business owner or a husband, father, or lover, we will come to the choice of staying comfortable in being good enough in our current state, or choosing discomfort in trying to be more. Some people are satisfied with just doing enough and no more than that. We are not those people, though.

…

This drive we have for strength is a choice. At some point in our relationship with lifting, we chose strength. We didn’t choose maintenance, we didn’t choose just being healthy, and we didn’t choose mediocrity. We are not satisfied with simply maintaining what we have but instead work to become more than what we currently are. We made a choice not to be weak; we would be strong.

Whether we realize it or not, this separates us from the vast majority of the population—not just people that go to gyms, but the general untrained population as well. How many people spend weeks, months, and years training themselves to be better? How many people wake up every day and ask themselves, “am I stronger than I was yesterday?” Most do not.

– Alexander Cortes, “Strength is a Choice“

Sure he’s talking about powerlifting, but strength is more than physical muscle. Making yourself better goes beyond iron.

Sunday Metal – Tombs

/ hsoi

Yeah… I was browsing Decibel Magazine’s blog and found a lot of great stuff for Sunday Metal (you take your inspiration wherever you can find it).

One was a “best of” list from Mike Hill, guitarist and vocalist for Tombs. Never heard of them until I read this and went looking for more info on them, and they’re pretty interesting.

Check out a recording of them performing right here in Austin at Waterloo Records

Yeah, the recording is a little shitty, but they’ve got some intensity. Check ’em out.

Anyways, the next some Sunday Metal’s will be based upon Mike Hill’s list.

Measuring progress

/ hsoi

Using the scale to measure progress is tough, because it just tells weight, not composition. If you lose fat and gain muscle, you could show no progress on the scale.

That’s my problem.

So you have to look at other things, like measurements, calipers, and so on.

I am not going crazy with measuring, tho I probably should. But here’s what I can say.

I look in the mirror and for sure I’m losing the muffin top. I’m not fat, never been fat, just had more flab on my body than I cared for. Muffin top, a bit of a gut, some smoothness in the jaw line. But I can see, while still there, they are diminishing.

My powerlifting belt was a 40″ from BestBelts. I’m now hooking it into the last hole. And with my fat loss something I certainly want to and that will continue, I know things will get smaller. So I just ordered a 36″ belt from BestBelts. I’d say this is progress in the right direction.

I can also tell because my pants fit differently. On the one hand, I cinch my belts a little tighter, a little more room around the waistband. On the other, the legs are tighter, the seat is tighter. Growth!

Another sign of growth? XL shirts are a little tight, a little uncomfortable. XXL shirts fit me better; a shoulders, arms, chest thing. They also hang different (so says Wife).

So I reckon this is all good progress in the right direction. 🙂

Commitments and Priorities

/ hsoi

I saw the above image posted to the DangerouslyHardcore Facebook page. In case the image goes away it says:

Commitment means staying loyal to what you said you were going to do long after the mood you said it in has left you.

Very true.

I’ve had a bunch of things rolling in my head for a while, and seeing the above image/text along with something that happened in Wife’s life a few days ago… it changed my priorities regarding my commitments.

I had committed to being more involved in shooting competitions, like IDPA. That’s going down the priority ladder.

I had committed to working on a new iPhone app. This commitment was made some time ago, work started, but has been treading water for too many months. This is going up the priority ladder.

I only have so much time and energy. The app went down the ladder because after staring at the computer all day and busting my ass all week for the day job, I just didn’t have the desire to look at the computer any more. I was (am) drained. Other things went up the priority ladder because they were not-computer things. They gave me something else to do, something else to occupy my mind and energy. Plus they were things that needed attention.

Well… the lack of app commitment also strikes a little closer because this particular app project is very personal. It’s something I’m doing with Wife, and it means a lot to her. That I haven’t been able to give it the attention it’s due is not right, and I feel horrible. It’d be one thing to not honor the commitment to myself, or to anyone else. But to not honor this commitment to my wife? That’s not right, and that hurts me deeply. It wasn’t not honored out of malice or anything bad, just exhaustion. I need to do something about it.

And in some regard, the mood for the app has left me. It’s mostly because I’ve been away, had too many false restarts, and it’s just hard to get motivated yet yet yet again. But I know once I truly get back into it, I’ll roll along alright. I need to rediscover my commitment, and see it through.

So, since much of my “free time” is on the weekends, that means I need to spend it working on this app.

That means shooting matches is out, for now. I don’t expect the app will take me all year to do, so I reckon later this year I should be able to make it out to matches. As well, so long as I keep dry firing at home and regularly shooting, like when I go out to KRT to teach, that’s alright. I mean, if I can run through a few magazines, run a few drills, assess state of things, then go home and dry fire to bring up the skill, then go back and shoot to measure progress, really, that’s OK. That will hold me for now. That I’m just shooting live at least once a month is well, about what shooting competition would be. Granted, there isn’t any of the pressure or environment, but this is the trade-off for now while I live up to my more important commitment. I just have to keep up with dry fire and ensuring I put at least a mag or two through the gun (for myself, with purpose) when I go out to teach.

I’m not abandoning my commitment to shooting competition, just changing course a bit. I have to, because Wife is more important. 🙂  And hopefully it brings other commitments back, like more regular dry fire and practice.

I can only look at this as a good thing, as long as I remain committed. 🙂