Combining two sets of geek happiness. 🙂  Very well done clip.
Author: hsoi
Now it’s my turn
Youngest appears to be over it.
Daughter appears to be almost over it.
Oldest is still unscathed, as far as we can tell.
Wife is on the mend.
And now it’s my turn to go down for the count. Headache growing all morning. Presently have a 100.7Âş fever. I’m sure all the other fun stuff is only a matter of hours away.
I’ll be back whenever I get back… or bored of lying in bed. 🙂
Meantime, how about that SCOTUS today?
Don’t judge too quickly
A friend just showed me these Ameriquest Mortgage commercials, made around the theme “don’t judge too quickly”:
The premise is simple, all the situations are innocent, but if you walked into the situation at just the right time the impression you receive could be rather different than the reality of the situation.
When it comes to self-defense situations, there are some situations that are cut and dry. For instance, if someone is attacking me, it’s clear cut that I’ll be involved. If someone is attacking my wife or children, it’s clear cut that I will become involved. But what about some other situations?
For instance, you’re at the gas station or a convenience store and a scumbag comes in and holds up the place. What do you do? Do you get involved? That’s far less clear cut. Some would say yes they would get involved, but what are the legal implications? What are the liabilities? Is it worth dying over?
In the above situations, things look as they seem. But in the spirit of “don’t judge too quickly”, what if you happen upon a situation in progress? For instance, you pull up to the convenience store just as people are running out and someone yells “stop that man!”. Your gut reaction likely is the yeller is the victim and the person running away is the robber. But can you be sure of that? Maybe the yeller is an accomplice or the scumbag herself trying to distract you… maybe that person running away was just an innocent bystander trying to get the hell out of there. Should you get involved, especially if you don’t know the whole story? should you not judge too quickly?
I’m not sure what the answers are here, in terms of giving out a specific “do this” recipe. If you do need a guideline, think about “what maximizes beer and TV time“. The only thing I can say is you must think about these things ahead of time. When the time comes is not a time to make a decision, especially because your chance of making a wrong decision is high. Figure out your boundaries ahead of time, make your mistakes while it’s safe. Then if the situation ever does present itself, you better your chances of success. Everyone’s lines are drawn in different places, just be sure you know where yours are drawn.
And this is why we want to carry in national parks
SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, California — Not far from Yosemite’s waterfalls and in the middle of California’s redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.
Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.
So you’re out for a backwoods hike. You stumble into a marijuana field… and the growers won’t take kindly to that.
Many of the plots are encircled with crude explosives and are patrolled by guards armed with AK-47s who survey the perimeter from the ground and from perches high in the trees.
Of course, we knew this. But there are those that think parks are safe havens. Folks, they are no more special than anywhere else. Bad people will lurk about. Erecting artificial barriers that only keep law-abiding citizens in a submissive and weakened state (and thus embolden the bad guys)…. please, I’m still waiting for someone to show me the logic in that line of thought.
And… we’re down again
Just when I thought I’d be getting back in the swing…. 2 are down.
Youngest was ill with something last week but seems to be over it now. Around 3 AM his morning Daughter wakes me up.
“Daddy?”
“Huh… Yes?”
“Tummy….”
and proceeds to throw up on the side of my bed.
Joy.
And now Wife seems to have it.
Oldest and I remain on the hitlist….
Thankfully it just seems to be annoying for a few days, worst at the onset then once you throw up you’re on the road to recovery.
I can’t wait for my turn! 🙂
Werner Carry System
One thing that I had seen before but didn’t pay much attention to was the Werner Carry System. Reason being I just wasn’t sure about the Hip Grip. Would it hold securely? I don’t need it falling off my belt and sliding down my pant leg.
However, after this past weekend’s snub classes, I’m going to give it a try. It seems ideal for my needs in many ways. While I didn’t get to fondle a gun with this specific setup, a guy did have a snub with a T-Grip on it and I got to hold that. That made quite a difference in the feel. Plus this guy was very familiar with the setup so I was able to ask him a lot of questions and he was most helpful and detailed in his answers.
You see, the current Pachmayr Compac grips I have are great grips in terms of filling my hand, having a lot of tacky-ness, room for my pinky, and absorbing recoil. They’re not too huge for the gun either, but yes they are a bit on the big side and affect concealability. But with something like the T-Grip, it helps to fill the grip out in my hand. Couple that with the T-Grips (and given my concerns have been alleviated, all except for trying it myself) and I’m ready to give this a try as I think it will solve a lot of things.
I will start off without the Hogue grip and see how that goes. I’ll add that in later on.
T-Grip and Hip Grips are ordered. I’ll write more when the arrive and I can try it all out.
AAR – Snub Training with Claude Werner
February 27-28, 2010 weekend, KR Training hosted a guest instructor. Claude Werner, one of the top snub revolver guys in the nation (IDPA Master-level shooter, 5 years as the chief instructor at the Rogers Shooting School, and someone that’s carried a snub for about 30 years), came and taught two classes specifically on the snub revolver. Â This is my After Action Report (AAR) on the two days of snub-specific training.
Your sobering thought for today
Driving home tonight from a long day and a long weekend of training. Before I left another student that left about 20 minutes prior phoned back to say there was some big accident at the intersection of US 290 and TX-21. There’s no other way to get home than go through there so I prepared myself for a delay.
When I came upon that intersection it was shut down completely with police directing me onto US 290 West to go back to Austin. Within moments of getting onto 290 I see more lights in the distance. Eventually all traffic comes to a complete stand-still. And we sit. I don’t know the full story, but it appears there were 2 vehicular incidents (don’t know about the first, but this second was certainly a collision). They were significant incidents.
While sitting I saw one ambulance leave. A little while later, that same one returned. Another ambulance left. That’s not a good sign.
Finally after about an hour traffic started moving. Cars crawled through the area of the collision.
It was horrible.
It was violent.
You could see the skid marks all over the road. The ground is soft so you could see all the earth torn up as the truck and the other car skidded off the highway. The truck was smashed up pretty good. The other car (maybe a Honda Pilot?) was on its side, destroyed. Based upon what I saw, the only way my brain could process what happened was that it was an extremely violent event. It was just terrible.
The perspective I kept? Sure, this inconveniences me, but there are other lives truly affected tonight. I mean… maybe I got home an hour late, but at least I got to go home.
The fragility of life.
And this after spending two days in a firearms training course, which ended with a good presentation and discussion about the sober realities of gunfights. But before you take this as something bad or depressing, really it’s just a matter of perspective. At least for me, the one that experienced all of this and is making some sort of feeble attempt to convey it all to whomever reads this.
I don’t carry a gun because I want to hurt or harm people. I carry a gun because I wish to preserve life: mine, my loved ones. You see how fragile, how frail we are. How finite life is. How in an instant it can be taken from us or at least changed drastically and forever. In the end, how do you choose to live your life? If you wish to live a long and healthy one… plan and act accordingly.
It doesn’t stop things from happening, but being reminded of your mortality now and again is healthy — it helps you keep life in perspective. As Jason Becker said:
We live thinking we will never die. We die thinking we have never lived. Cut it out.
This doesn’t mean I live in fear of dying. While I don’t look forward to the event, I know that death is the only true guarantee in life; it’s only a question of when and how. Rather, it’s about ensuring you live a good and full life. Are you going to look back on your life and wish you spent more time at the office or more time with your kids? Why do you eat healthful food? because you want to be around to spend more time with your kids. Why do you exercise? so you can be around to spend more time with your kids. So, same with the gun, that is someone opted to try to take me away from them or them away from me, I will do all in my power to ensure my kids and I can continue to spend more time together.
I strive to live a full and healthy life. One just has to keep everything in perspective. This weekend provided a reminder and reinforcement of that. Some of that came in an unexpected way.
Thank God for Government Regulations
An anonymous customer complaint to the county brought health inspectors to the store, who determined its tradition of more than 15 years of offering coffee and doughnuts to customers violated food-handling regulations.
“We’ve been doing this since we bought the place 15 years ago and the previous owner was doing it, too,” said Randy Collins, 42, co-owner with his parents of B & B. “We simply weren’t aware we were causing a problem.”
Inspectors told Collins that unless he was willing to install stainless-steel sinks with hot and cold water and have a prep kitchen to handle the food, he was violating the law.
Wow. Thank God for those inspectors. I mean, sure for well over 15 years nothing has happened, but something might! I mean, they need a prep area to open that box of donuts. It’s the only safe way!
Years ago Wife wanted to start her own business. Being that I work in Geek Land, she wanted to make meals for geeks. Many of the geeks I worked with at the time were single and work was their life. Many couldn’t cook and lived off eating out or pre-made meals (e.g. TV dinner type stuff). Wife’s cooking is excellent, so her idea was to make batches of meals, put them into single-serving containers and freeze them. Make weekly deliveries to the geeks of food… then they just have to heat and eat and get delicious and nutritious “as close to home-cooked as they’ll get” meals. Great idea, right?
Wife looked into what it would take to make that happen. Once she saw all of the regulations required (e.g. we’d need 2 mop sinks… two) she gave up on the idea. She wanted to start small. She wanted to do this out of our home. She didn’t want to secure massive loans and property at the onset. She didn’t want to put the family well-being at too much risk in case it failed, but if it took off it would be able to build on its own. But it was just too much. According to the reams of codes and regulations, our home isn’t fit for making food for others… and neither is yours. You’d even be surprised to find out if you entertain dinner guests often enough that you’re in violation of this same code.
Yes. Let’s do all we can to encourage and enable entrepreneurship.
Sunday Metal – AC/DC
The Young Brothers. What would rock and heavy metal be if not for them?
“Let There Be Rock”. Listen to that opening guitar… just a dirty, driving guitar riff.
Under “rock anthem”, this song is listed:
And my favorite AC/DC song, “Walk All Over You”
