Author: hsoi

81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival

/ hsoi

Today the family went to the 81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival.

I have wanted to attend this for some years and for some reason or other it never happened, so I was determined to attend this year. And attend we did!

We took the shuttle to Austin’s famous Zilker Park, and in a way, the shuttle was an event unto itself. The city provided free shuttles to/from the event, and they used school buses for it. This was the first time my kids got to ride a school bus (I rode them all the time when I was growing up), so now they sorta know what it’s like… minus the loud kids, bullying, and other assorted mayhem that comes with the school bus. 🙂  It brought back memories of being on the bus Safety Patrol!

After arriving at the park we went to the “build-a-kite” workshop. It was a free workshop sponsored by HEB and others and you could build a basic kite. Middle child and Youngest child opted to build a kite, and they flew just fine. The wind today was ample for kite flying, but it would die down at times and many kites would be crashing to the ground. Yesterday the winds in Austin were 25-35 MPH steady and gusty, so that would have been some very interesting kite flying weather.

We walked around, checked out many of the kites. All sorts of kites of all shapes, sizes, designs, colors, and variety. It’s almost impossible to describe or even capture on film just how cool it was to look up in the sky and see hundreds of kites flying together. It’s just something you have to experience.

We ate “fair food”, from corn dogs to sausage on a stick to snow cones to cotton candy to funnel cakes. Yes… I can’t pass up a funnel cake, tho the one we had was very oily (I suspect they didn’t let it drain enough). Oh yes, and roasted corn. Mmm. Everything was rather expensive, but all proceeds after expenses are benefiting charities and worthy causes so it’s all good. I think I’m going to have a very light salad for dinner tho. 😉

After watching many kites, flying our free kites, and walking around and seeing all there was to see, we ended up buying our own kite. A nice nylon “triangle-style” (I don’t know what the proper term is). It flew quite well, and I had a lot of fun flying it. It was tough flying tho, with so many kites in the air, so many people around, you didn’t have the total freedom to roam where and how needed to keep the kite aloft. Thus, the most often heard thing today was: *thud* “Sorry!!” “No problem!” as kites would dive down, hit someone in the head, strings tangle around you, tails whipping in your face. But no one got mad; everyone expected to get hit sooner or later. It was a day filled with laughter, smiles, and fun. Good times.

If you haven’t been to the Kite Festival, you need to try it. And do like we did, go in the morning, leave in the afternoon. The lines for the shuttle were unreal, but since we’re early birds well… we were in and out no problem.

Sunday Metal – Mötley Crüe

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Mötley Crüe was the epitome of rock/metal in the 80’s. They had the music, they had MTV, but most of all they had the lifestyle: sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, wine, women, and song.  I’d swear you heard more about The Crüe’s off-stage exploits than their on-stage: Vince’s car wreck, Tommy Lee’s string of Hollywood wives, Nikki’s drug use, and Mick… well Mick was the recluse. Every album told a different story because of whatever their latest exploits were. You loved this band not just because of their music, but because of all they did in the name of rock. It was pure rebellion and disgusted off your parents… what more could you ask for.

I know my first exposure was during the Shout at the Devil album, but not sure if it was first via MTV or via a class party. I know I was in elementary school and I think it was an end of the year class party. Teacher said you could bring your favorite music albums to play during the party. I remember seeing it… some kid brought it, an LP (you kids go ask your parents what that is), big as day, of an all black album with nothing but an upside-down pentagram on it. How awesome could you get? 🙂 And so it went. I’ve gotten to see them live a few times and they know how to put on a show.

YouTube won’t let me embed the music video to Wild Side (one of my favorites), so instead here they are performing it live back in ’87:

As an added bonus, a recent side-project of bassist and chief songwriter is Sixx: A.M.. Their first single is “Life is Beautiful”, written about Nikki’s past heroin addiction. I really like this song.

Texas Concealed Carry on Campus bills introduced

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Just read the word that SB 1164 and HB 1893 have been introduced to the Texas State Legislature.

If you live in Texas, contact your State Senator and State Representative and let them know your opinion on the matter.

Unclear on the concept

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It sounds like this is one women’s ignorance, so let’s not get too riled up over this. (h/t Xavier). I get the feeling she’s hung up on the pictures and the fact it’s an NRA program and isn’t looking at what’s actually being taught (the article mentions that in 10 years of the school district’s safety curriculum this is the first complaint they’ve ever received).

From the article:

“At 5 years old, anytime you tell a child not to touch something, that’s exactly what they do. It’s in their nature to be curious and to touch and handle things,” said Howe. 

Yes, Ms. Howe, it is in the nature of a 5 year old to be curious and touch things. That’s exactly what the Eddie Eagle program aims to deal with. “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”  It’s not teaching gun handling; in fact, it is explictly teaching not to touch at all!. It’s not teaching kids how to be killers. Eddie Eagle is teaching safety. I spoken about this before. Like it or don’t, a child has potential to come across a gun sometime in their life. Wouldn’t you want your child to know how to safely deal with the situation?

The Garland, Texas school district includes Eddie Eagle as a part of their safety curriculum. According to the article the Garland I.S.D.’s safety curriculum also teaches about life jackets, bicycle safety, car safety, dealing with strangers. Why should we want our children to be ignorant? Don’t we send them to school to learn? If we can teach them how to be safe with something, why wouldn’t we want to do that?  Of course now Ms. Howe’s child knows to “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”… the child can’t unlearn what has been learned. But if Ms. Howe thinks this is such horrible knowledge for her child to have, she’s welcome to teach her child differently: “Go head, pick it up, don’t tell anyone, play with it, bring it to school and show your friends.”  Logic need not apply.

Now Ms. Howe, if your 5 year old always disobeys you then that’s your problem as a parent. If you tell your child not to touch or do something and they disobey you and still touch or do it, then well… you’ve got larger parenting issues that need to be worked on.

 

Updated: Sebastian mentions it as well but gosh folks… we probably shouldn’t be extending her 15 minutes.

Crime in downtown Austin

/ hsoi

Overall, crime is low in Austin, but data is showing that crime is on the rise. Robbery, burglary, assault, rape… it’s all going up.

Austin Police Department of course believes the solution is more cops and surveillance cameras downtown. This isn’t going to stop crime, maybe only make it easier to clean up the mess and/or prosecute the crime after it’s been committed. 

Folks, the bottom line is simple: if you care about your safety, only you are responsible for it. While it’s nice if someone else can help you stay safe (additional layers), in the end only you can be guaranteed to be where you are when you need it.

Range Report

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

As I mentioned previously, I got my XD-9 back so of course I had to go to the range to try it out. Took Oldest Child with me.

The range was rather busy today (one reason I prefer to go on mid-week mornings), so consequently I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do to really try things out. Brought the 10/22 for Oldest, set him up at 25 yards and let him go to town. You can see his results (no, the picture isn’t upside down, I stapled the target upside down since I was in a hurry). Overall, not bad. He’s certainly improving.

One issue we were up against is the scope was loose; actually, the base is loose. So, I’m going to have to fix that. I was having him work on fundamentals: body position, focusing on the crosshairs (since there’s no front sight), good trigger press, and good follow-through. That’s the toughest thing, getting him to follow-through and not go “bangdidihitit?”. As you can see from the grouping, he’s off to the left. This could be a bit of trigger slap (I did work with him a bit on a better trigger press, looking for the “surprise break”), but given how very consistent he was on this and other targets, I’m presently going to chalk it up to the scope being loose and thus off zero. I know it was frustrating for him to not “aim middle of red dot, hit middle of red dot”, but it was a good lesson in learning that it’s more about the grouping than always hitting the middle of the dot (tho yes, that’s important). The wiggly scope gave a good and digestible excuse for today, and this allows to lead into a greater discussion of things like trajectory, zeroing sights, height-over-bore, and so on. Stuff for later. Right now, my main focus is for him to work on the fundamentals, see success, see himself improving, and enjoy what he’s doing. So far, so good. I’m happy with his progress.

 

As for me, again because the range was rather busy I just set up 2 target stands and put 5 6″ paper plates on each stand. No defensive or other “real” shooting, this was to be nothing more than a basic running of the gun to see how she now is. I set them up at 15 yards, which was good because I need to work on 15-25 yard (i.e. greater than 7 yards) shooting, and with these new sights I knew I could get the accuracy I couldn’t get with the XS Sights (the paper plates would disappear completely behind the big front dot). Plus given the way the range was set up, for Oldest to shoot at 25 yards and for me to be next to him, I had to then shoot at 15 yards… so really, it all worked out.

How did the gun do? Better than me. 🙂 The trigger is really tight, in the good way. I will have to do a lot of dry-fire practice to get used to the trigger. My “muscle memory” wanted to have a normal XD trigger, travelling and feeling like a stock XD trigger does, so things felt odd and I wasn’t shooting as well as I normally do, but that’s to expected. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the trigger; again, it’s so tight, and yes I’d like to try it side-by-side with a good 1911 trigger to compare. Bottom line? I just need a lot of dry-fire with it and get used to it before I expend any more ammo at the range.

The Dawson Sights. You have to realize, while it’s February, the temperature today is in the high-80’s. It’s bright, sunny, I put on sunscreen before going to the range. This is an abnormal day weather-wise, but still a great one. And with all that sunlight, the fiber optic front sight just shined like a beacon. You couldn’t help but see it. Thinking back on it, the fact I couldn’t “see” the rear sight is testimony to a cleaner sight picture. As well, the wider notch (well at least the combination of the front and rear made the rear notch wide) well… everything just lines up. Your eye gets pulled to that front sight, which is what you want to focus on, and there’s nothing else to clutter the sight picture. But the other parts that must be in the sight picture are there and are there only enough for you to do what you need to do with them. The greater “whitespace” on either side of the front post might just be thousandths of an inch wider than stock, but it makes such a difference to my eyes in terms of picking up the sight picture and knowing what it is and thus what may need to be corrected to have an ideal sight picture. It’s hard to explain, but this sight picture feels like the sight picture I want. There’s nothing to distract me, my eyes go where they should go and not where they shouldn’t. And my accuracy is far far better than they were with the XS Sights. Again, I’ll need more dry-fire practice with them, but so far I really like them. 

One thing I want to do is head to the local indoor range to get a better feel for the sights. The indoor range has the targets on a track so it’s very easy to adjust distance from 0 to 100 yards, and to do so without having to get the entire firing line to stop while you dance around with targets. This way I can get a better idea how the sights are zeroed and how they perform at various distances.

All in all, I’m pleased with how the custom work turned out. The gun itself seems good, it’s now just me that needs some work.

In related news, I ordered a SmartCarry and it came in the mail today. Can’t wait to try it out.

Updated: Talking about the day over supper with the family, I remembered a few things:

  1. Oldest got to learn about malfunctions! He had at least one stovepipe, 3 duds. 
  2. I kept working on that Todd Jarrett “grip 20% harder” technique. Man, that works. But I still have problems with my grip: one I know what to do about, one I don’t. The one I know what to do about is to just get a stronger grip… building those muscles up. The one I don’t know what to do about… it’s getting my left (non-shooting) hand to really hang on. Eventually my right (shooting) hand just works its way out of the left. I have felt that I need to thicken the grip up a bit so my big hands can better fit, leaves a little more “empty space” on the grip so the heel of my left hand can rest more “meat” on the grip (shooting an M&P with the big backstrap was great in this regard). Or maybe it’s just a matter of grip strength. 🙂

Back from Springer Precision

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I sent a Springfield XD-9 to Springer Precision to get some custom work done. FedEx man just came by and dropped off my package. I’m happy!

The trigger job is fantastic. The trigger is now is about as efficient as one can get. It feels amazing in dry fire. I’d like to try it out side-by-side with my buddy’s Wilson 1911 to see how the triggers compare. I’m sure the 1911’s will be better, but this feels like it’ll be about as close as one can get.

The Dawson Precision sights. I got the front fight as a red fiber optic 0.100″. It’s a little narrower than I expected, but the red dot still shines brightly. I also like the slightly wider notch on the all-black fixed rear sight (I think it’s 0.125″ but I could be wrong… I’ll have to ask). The front/rear combination lets in a lot of light around the front sight (compared to the stock sights) and again in dry fire my eyes seem to like that a lot more. Heck, even taking my glasses off (and my eyesight is horribly near-sighted) I can roughly make out the sight picture because I can see that light coming in. This’ll be interesting to experiment with.

And then, got a factory cleanup. I’m not sure all the little details that were done, but I can see a lot of polished pieces, gun oil everywhere. Slide even felt different to me first time I racked it out of the box. Working the gun felt smoother.

Now I just need to get to the range to try it out…. 

I will say I’m glad I got a lot of work done at once. The shipping costs were ridiculous (you must ship overnight priority), but you can contact Scott ahead of time and he’s able to give a discount, which helps but still overnight for such a “heavy” package is crazy. If you’re thinking of doing this, just make sure you spend more on the work than on shipping!

Also, turnaround was pretty good. I dropped it off at a shipping facility on the 17th, and I have it back today (10 days end to end).

More later….

 

Updated: Got to the range.

Self-Defense for all

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I’m in my mid-30’s. I’m a big guy (6’3″, 200#). I’m strong. I’m physically fit. I actively practice an empty-hand martial art.

One might argue that I’m able to take care of myself should someone attack me. Why should I need a gun to defend myself? Just knock ’em out with my fists or subdue them with a hold or something, right? Of course, that assumes that anyone would mess with big ugly me in the first place…. no one should mess with me, I don’t look like an easy target. Well, assumptions are fine, and I’m sure if I come across as food to some predator that I don’t come across as an easy target. But when there’s a pack of jackals about, they can take down a lion. Your biggest, baddest sport fighters lose a match now and again. No one is immune. But for the sake of argument, let’s say I am because of my state.

Is the world filled with people like me? No, not really. 

Look at Kellene. She admits to being 200 pounds, 5′ 2.5″, and out of shape. Does she not have a right to defend herself?

How about disabled folks? I see folks on motorized wheelchairs buzzing around town, but I always wonder what stops some degenerate from taking advantage of them?

How about the elderly? Is a big and fit 19 year old attacking a 75 year old man with a cane, hip replacement, and pacemaker really a fair fight?

Perhaps you could argue I don’t need a gun because I’m fairly equal or dominant by myself alone. I wouldn’t agree, because I know wolves travel in packs, because I am not so arrogant and blind as to think I’m invincible and “it could never happen to me”. What I would like you to explain to me how and why the above people, who don’t have the same advantages I do, should be denied an equalizer. Why should they be relegated to be weakened prey? Are their lives not important? They have every right to self-defense.

Johnny Cash Turns 77

/ hsoi

If Johnny Cash was still alive, today he’d be 77 years old. 

My wife grew up on country music, I didn’t. I always knew who he was but didn’t really discover The Man in Black until his later work with Rick Rubin. There’s something about his music that resonates with me… he’s very genuine.

Here’s “A Boy Named Sue”. My kids get a kick out of this song:

One of my favorites, Help Me (YouTube won’t let me embed, so you’ll have to click through). In fact, I think American V – A Hundred Highways is probably my favorite Johnny Cash album.

And so it begins

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The chOsen One claimed he wasn’t going to take our guns, that he wasn’t going to tread on our Second Amendment guaranteed but God-given freedom. I knew he lied then, his “change.gov” policies made it clear he lied, and now they’re trying to gain momentum by claiming it’s for the good of stoping drugs and violence in Mexico. Read about it here, and here, and here, and here.

This is dangerous waters Mr. Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress are treading into. With history of the previous AWB, basically the Congress got a major housecleaning after 1994. Bill Clinton even acknowledges losses were due to the passing of the AWB. If Mr. Obama wishes to have a long legacy, this is not the route to take.

 

Updated: and here. and good stuff here. and more here.

Updated 2: Seems Pelosi is saying no. (h/t to SayUncle). Sounds like someone knows she’ll be looking for a new job if she even thinks about going there. Still, it’s quite evident such things are on the mind of this President, Adminstration, and Congress… we must remain vigilant.