Author: hsoi

The quest for simple beer

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I love a good beer.

My first exposure to beer was Dad drinking Budweiser. “Dad, can I try a sip?” “Sure.” “Bleck, eww, that’s gross!!” But yet somehow that sowed the seed. When it comes to beer, wine, or liquor, my preference is beer. Used to be a heavier drinker (college and all that), but now I really don’t care to get drunk. I just enjoy a good beer now and again, like any beverage (find me a good lemonade and I’m really happy). I try to pair my beer with the meal I’m eating, and many times I don’t finish the beer because it’s not that important to me… we don’t always finish the glass of water or soda or tea with our meals, so why should there be any pressure to finish the beer? It’s just a beverage, the alcohol just happens to be there (tho I of course mind it because it will affect you). I’m not a drinker, I just like the taste of good beer.

I recall back in college (or maybe it was high school?) when Sam Adams came out, and drinking it was the first foray into “hoity-toity” beer (no more “Beast” here!). From there, you try other “fancy” things, eventually discovering Guinness and then life is never the same. I certainly love going to brew pubs, micro brewerys, discovering odd beers, adoring all things Belgian styled, preference for ales. I know what it is to be a beer snob. I can appreciate that these days beer lovers have more choices than ever before.

But that’s also part of the problem.

Yesterday I went to Spec’s. What a fantastic place to go as the selection is unmatched. But at the same time, it’s also overwhelming. You can spend hours there just looking at all that’s available, trying to figure out what you’d like to try, talking with the employees to get their opinions, maybe taste tests, maybe you can take home a pack of various singles to try them out. It’s actually quite the adventure.

On the same token, it also demonstrates that things are getting kinda silly. Everyone is on a quest to make some serious sort of beer. There’s gazillions of IPA’s out there, wheat beers, fruit beers, heck… I just discovered a “barley wine style ale” (very strong, very bitter, but good). Then trying to go for some sort of special line that’s even more special than their normal special beers, hand-crafted in small batches, blah blah blah. There’s just so much available, but it’s all trying to be more complex than the next guy, more trendy than the other micro-brewery.

What happened to simple beer?

I’m not talking Beast (piss-water is still piss-water). I’d still like the beer to taste good and have some meaning in the mouth. But can we put away the beer snobbery and try to make something simple? On a hot Texas afternoon, I just don’t find IPA’s to be refreshing… they can be very delicious, but it’s not just something I want to knock back when I’m hot and tired, or just standing around the BBQ pit with my buds while the brisket smokes. I’ve actually found myself drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon lately because it’s simple and refreshing, but still has some decent taste to it.

Maybe it’s the engineer in me that appreciates true simplicity. That to make something complex just to be complex, well, almost anyone can do that…. it’s easy to keep adding things. But to take things away, to strip down until you get to the true essence of something, to have the self-control to do so… there’s a greater beauty and challenge in that, I think.

So to my readers… can you suggest a good, simple beer?

John Mackey – I knew it

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A few days ago John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods Market, wrote an opinion piece to the Wall Street journal about health care reforms.

I wrote:

But there’s something kinda fun about reading this opinion piece penned by John Mackey, CEO and co-founder of Whole Foods. I think it’s because I know the vast majority of Whole Foods’ customers wouldn’t agree with him. Something about the sort of people Whole Foods tends to attract vs. the Obama voter/supporter demographic vs. those that want socialized medicine and the government to cure all their ills.

I was right.

I guess it never occurred to them, as they bought their overpriced yuppie food, that there’s probably someone getting rich off their consumer habits. Or just the fact that they’re consumers and feeding this very beast, and to some degree probably better off that most since they can afford to shop at Whole Foods in the first place.

I love elitist arrogance, and the ignorance it brings. 🙂

Updated: Oh, some of the comments:

“I will never shop there again,” vowed Joshua

[…]

“I’m boycotting [Whole Foods] because all Americans need health care,” said Lent, 33, who used to visit his local Whole Foods “several times a week.”

[…]

“I will no longer be shopping at Whole Foods,” [Christine] Taylor told ABCNews.com. “I think a CEO should take care that if he speaks about politics, that his beliefs reflect at least the majority of his clients.”

[…]

“These are people who have already gone out of the way to find a place that is more expensive to buy certain types of food,” he said. “So in theory, they might be more willing to take the action to go somewhere else if they don’t agree with Mackey.”

First, Christine Taylor appears to affirm my prior assessment of Whole Foods’ customer base.

And isn’t it nice to see that they appreciate choice? The ability to boycott. That they appreciate an ability to disagree with something and take their business elsewhere. Gosh… don’t you love a free market? 🙂

The irony. I savor it.

First week iPhone impressions

/ hsoi

I just returned from a business trip to Chicago. I must admit that this trip was the event that pushed me over the edge to finally buy an iPhone. A combination of needing a dedicated mobile phone for staying in touch with Wife, for work folk to get/stay in contact, and all of the data support. In fact, I knew I wanted the iPhone more for data functionality than phone. I was correct in that area.

I love wireless computing. I love the 802.11 network in my house and how I can sit on the couch or out on the back patio and ‘pute. The one bummer has been that while technically it is wireless I am still ultimately tethered to a general location by the range of the wireless base station. I can’t do things on the road. Having the iPhone and Internet access via AT&T’s 3G network puts the world at my fingertips almost anywhere I am. There is great power and convenience in that. For example, I started writing this post while riding on the hotel shuttle bus to O’Hare airport. Or how after typing that I had to save a draft and then I continued writing the post from inside the O’Hare terminal while I wait for my plane to board. And now, I am back home and finishing the blog post on my MacBook Pro.

I find one huge advantage is being able to keep up. I can check and send email, read my RSS feeds, or just browse the web for news and information. Certainly being able to blog from “anywhere” is useful as well towards ensuring at least one blog post every day. Being able to keep up with communications and not having to “return to the desktop” to catch up and be in touch is a huge boon. Normally after a trip like this, due to the forced offline time of travel, I’d come back Monday morning to a huge slew of email and things to have to slog through and catch up on. No longer. I can just chug right along and not miss a beat.

One problem however is “ostrich syndrome”; that’s where you are so heads down focused on the device that you become oblivious to the world around you. Some people take it a step further, walking around while they do this. It comes with the territory to some extent, but I have to train myself against it. I don’t want to be oblivious to my surroundings. This is something that has to be worked on, to find a balance between being focused on your work but also focused on your surroundings.

Another problem is battery life. It’s amazing how quickly it goes down. There are things you can do to help reduce power consumption, so I’ve done what I can there. Apple posts some useful tips.

I have gotten used to typing. I don’t think I’ll be as good a typist as I can at a real keyboard. There’s no tactile feedback from the keystrokes, it’s using your thumbs and not all 10 of your fingers, but I was impressed how well I could get around. While I may not want to compose essays on the iPhone, certainly I don’t have much problem dealing with emails or even writing a short blog posting. 🙂

But again, the biggest thing I like is being able to have access anywhere. I can just pull out the phone, fire up Safari, and look something up. Or pull out Maps and figure out where to go, from where I presently am. There’s an amazing amount of power and convenience to this, and I’m fortunate to have it.

Sunday Metal – Bad Brains

/ hsoi

We got that PMA (Postive Mental Attitude)!

Bad Brains, born in Washington D.C. then subsequently banned in D.C. What made them stand out? Not just the fact it was four black guys playing punk music (later with a more metal edge, e.g. “Quickness”), not just the fact they mixed in Rastafarian belief and reggae music with their aggressive punk style, not just their high-engergy live shows that did things like convert Henry Rollins. It was the sum of all these parts that made Bad Brains and their place in music history.

More questions from stats

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

So, more questions from my blog stats:

do or do not dry fire a .22

Generally no, you should not dry fire a rimfire gun. It will eventually lead to damaging the gun. However, it is worthwhile to ask the manufacturer. For instance, Ruger’s 10/22 specifically says in its user guide that you can dry fire it — certainly more the exception than the rule. On my Buck Mark, it didn’t say either way so I called Browning’s customer support to ask and they said no.

That said, you could use snap caps, but I’ve had a hard time finding .22 LR snap caps. There are some that claim to be, but online reviews say they’re too short and thus may not feed right. Probably not a problem if you have a .22 revolver, but in things like the Ruger 10/22’s rotary magazine they won’t work. YMMV.

how to accurately shoot a 9mm pistol

Slow down. 🙂

Seriously. Accuracy and speed are somewhat of an inverse relationship. Granted as you get better you can shoot both faster and more accurately, but ultimately one will have to be sacrificed somewhat for the other.

You can check out my posting about how to correct handgun shooting problems for some target helps.

I would also recommend attending a reputable school and obtaining training. Having a good teacher does wonders.

why 9mm so expensive 2009

Short answer: Obama.

Longer answer: Obama got elected US President, and a Democrat-controlled Congress. It has long been established that Obama is no friend to gun owners and gun rights (his actions speak clearer than his words). People felt once he got elected that resurrecting the “assault weapons ban” was going to happen so there was quite a run on guns and ammo. The run on guns seems to be quieting down since people are tapped out for money. Ammo is still trying to regain stability but signs are pointing towards things improving (both prices dropping and stocks building).

are guns free on tax free weekend?

Probably not, but I guess it depends how you interpret that question.

Guns will likely not be free on any weekend, or weekday for that matter. Someone somewhere wants to make money and just won’t be giving them away. 🙂

What tax free weekend? Here in Texas when you say “tax free weekend” it generally refers to the sales tax holiday used to help kids get ready for back-to-school. Guns are not on the list of approved items; in fact, not a lot of stuff is. Generally sporting goods are not considered necessities for schooling (e.g. cleats, helmets, pads, rollerskates, etc. aren’t tax free).

Or if you mean maybe a sales tax holiday for guns, earlier in this 2009 Texas Legislative season, Sen. Jeff Wentworth proposed one, but it went nowhere.

preferred shotgun for home defense

There isn’t one. 😉  To paraphrase John Holschen: AR, AR, AR.

That said, if you really want a shotgun, most any will do so long as it is reliable and works well. I’d prefer one with a shorter barrel, e.g. an 18.5″ or 20″ vs. say 26″ or so… dealing with navigating in the tighter confines of hallways and such. I’d prefer 12 gauge, but 20 can be fine too. Buckshot (00 for 12 gauge, #3 or #4 for 20 gauge). Use reduced recoil loads, if possible to make it easier to fire and fire again. Semi-auto may be more finicky and require more maintenance, but it will be a lot easier for the untrained to operate vs. a pump, whereas a pump is likely to be more reliable and run whatever you feed it but you gotta know what you’re doing; consider who will be using it. Make sure you pattern your gun and your load, and go through various loads until you find the one that works best; change chokes if needed too. Read this to see why patterning is important.

Check this.

And practice, practice, practice.

District 9

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Went to see the movie District 9 tonight.

I won’t say much, as I don’t want to spoil things.

My overall take was that it was an enjoyable movie. Not what I was expecting… a level of emotional involvement happened to me, and I didn’t expect the movie would have such a thing. I thought that was good tho, given how the movie works out. A little slow to start, but they have to do that to build everything properly. It works. It didn’t feel labored or extraneous. Yeah, you have to do a little belief suspension and not try to put logic into every last little detail… just shut up and enjoy the movie for what it is.

That all said, the gun nut in me just loved the movie. Man… guns everywhere. Gratuitous use of 1911’s and AK-47’s, M-16’s, a Beretta 92, shotguns galore, probably a bunch of other things that I missed or couldn’t identify in all the firefights. Plus the alien weaponry. Gun nuts are going to love this movie. 🙂

Good stuff. Check it out.

Stage 2 water restrictions

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

The drought is so bad in Austin, the city just went to stage 2 water restrictions.

Here’s a list.

One thing I’m happy about is that while you cannot wash off surfaces like sidewalks, you can if it’s to remove a health hazard. All the duck poop that we get on the walkway up to our front door due to the visiting waterfowl, I’m glad I can still wash it away. It’s be horrible if we couldn’t.

If any of you have some extra rain, please send it our way. 🙂

Concealed Carry 101

/ hsoi

Howard Nemerov gives a brief overview to the legal concealed carry of a handgun in the United States.

I’ve previously looked at legal requirements for handgun purchase and concealed carry, and what that says about such a person.

NetNewsWire and NewsGator – part deux

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I like NetNewsWire. I never used their NewsGator service because I had no need. I get my iPhone, I want an RSS reader there, I see NNW exists for it, and using NewsGator I can sync up and go and keep everything merrily in sync between my MacBook Pro and NNW and my iPhone and NNW. But then, NewsGator opts to change how things are done.

Originally I wasn’t happy about this, but now, I don’t know. Now that NNW exclusively performs its syncing and updating via the NewsGator service, I notice that I’m often lagging behind in feed updates or not getting updates entirely. This is not a step in the right direction. Who knows. Maybe the Google Reader mechanisms will work better here. I don’t know, never used it.

But honestly, all of this is feeling like a big step back in functionality. If NewsGator/NNW is honestly going to make things better, then fine go forward with the changes. But so far, my confidence is shaken and I am thinking about finding another RSS reader. 😦

Guns on campus – one year later

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One year ago the Harrold (Texas) Independent School District did something groundbreaking: they allowed teachers and staff members to carry concealed handguns on campus, in the classroom, and — gasp — around children.

Here’s the story of how things are, one year later.

In short:

In the year since that historic decision, a gun was never brandished or fired at the school. There were no problems, [HISD Superintendent David] Thweatt said.

Granted that doesn’t mean that guns in school kept bad things from happening, but it does show that after a year with guns directly in school that nothing horrible did happen. The guns didn’t cause immediate death of all the schoolchildren. There weren’t any problems with teachers whipping out their guns to keep the kids in line. Nothing. Life just went about as normal.

So why have the guns in school? Response time, as a matter of practical importance towards keeping those kids safe:

However, one week after school began, police busted a methamphetamine lab set up in an abandoned house that sat 50 feet from the school property.

A deputy had peered inside and “saw something in the walls and windows and called for backup,” Thweatt said. “They made it to the abandoned house in 15 minutes. We had figured it would take 18 to 20 minutes in a typical situation.”

Had that been an armed intruder at his school, response time would have been too slow.

“We’re the first responders. We have to be,” Thweatt said. “We don’t have 5 minutes. We don’t have 10 minutes. We would have had 20 minutes of hell” if attackers had targeted the school.

So what did the kids think about the policy?

Harrold students, who grew up on ranches and in the middle of the North Texas gun culture, were unperturbed by the school district’s new gun policy.

“The kids just laughed about it,” Thweatt said.

It’s no big deal. Kids aren’t phased, everyone went about life as usual.

But if it is life as usual, why do it? Thweatt explains:

When a London reporter asked Thweatt to explain why so many kooks go into schools looking for a body count, Thweatt said he couldn’t explain such a devolution of society, but he did know a simple way to stop it — the same solution he chose for Harrold ISD.

“Good guys with guns — good,” he said. “Bad guys with guns — bad.”