oooo…. belt-fed 12 gauge.
Zombie apocalypses will never be the same!
Updated: In the spirit of my previous post, belt-fed 12 gauge Benny Hillified. Or probably more appropriately, Epic-ified.
Author: hsoi
A Pet’s 10 Commandments
More from Xavier: A Dog’s 10 Commandments. I prefer to say “pets” because this could very well apply to cats too.
Yeah, I’m a cat person but I know a dog’s in our future. Two of our cats are old. Ig is about 16 years old. She’s become rather frail in the past couple years. Very thin, these days pretty much skin and bones. We removed her collar because her fur had worn off under it (slowly growing back). When she meows, often nothing comes out (her meow is broken). On her left rear leg around the “knee” there’s been something… it was small, now it’s rather large. Vet doesn’t know exactly what it is, could just be something like calcification accumulation or it could be a tumor. He could do all sorts of expensive tests to determine what it is, but in the end the results would be the same. She’s just too old to operate, or to amputate… likely wouldn’t survive any surgeries at her age and state. So in the end, there’s nothing we can do. We just watch it grow. We watch her limp (it’s not bad, but it’s there). We watch her having a rough time sitting… she has to adjust how she sits which shifts her balance and sometimes you see her fall over. She can’t jump as high as she used to. But she can still run up the stairs after me… at least, when she’s not sleeping (she sleeps a lot these days). I’ve said that once she’s not running up the stairs after me, that’s going to be a hard day for me.
I’ve had Ig since she was a kitten. Got her in college. I recall my roommate and I going and picking her out, bringing her home. When my roommate left for Texas, Ig stayed with me. When I made my move to Texas, she came with me, locked in her carrier cage the whole 2000 mile trip, on the seat next to me in the cab of the U-Haul truck. Leaving all her kitty nose prints on the front window of my apartment in Bryan as she watched and waited for me to come home from my day of grad school whatever. And now, being here with me…. being her crotchity self but growing very warmly attached to my oldest child.
And like all living things, she grows old. So in reading the post from Xavier, #9 is what we’re doing. We just take care of her. She’s overall ok tho. Still a happy and loving cat. Just obvious that age is taking hold, and there’s no telling how much longer she’ll be with us. So we just love her while we’ve got her, spoil her while we can. And when it’s time for #10, it’s going to be one of the hardest things I’ll ever have to do in my life.
Rare act of sportsmanship?
Via Xavier, I read about this “rare act of sportsmanship“. Yeah… you’ll want some tissue.
The story itself was wonderful. But is this a rare act of sportsmanship? I don’t think so. I think it’s just an act of sportsmanship (and in this case, a very awesome act of sportsmanship). What might make it rare is that we don’t hear about such things all the time. Look at the news. What do we hear about? It’s all negative, ugly, hateful, shitty things that are going on in the world. You hear it over and over, you start to think it’s the way things are. The thing is, it’s only a small slice of what’s going on in a day. Most of what goes on in a day are good things. And they’re little things, but they add up.
For example, yesterday at my black belt testing I’m walking from the parking lot to the building. I see also coming to the door at the same time are a couple people carrying a large tub of something (probably equipment) and they’re rather burdened down, no way they’ll navigate the door themselves. So I hustle up and hold the door open for them. Then as I’m holding the door, I offer to let other people in as well, but they stop and insist instead that they hold the door for me and I go first. Sure it’s a small thing — certainly not some newsworthy event — but it’s those small things, those small acts of kindness that matter.
Just because you hear it on the news over and over doesn’t mean the world is a horrible ugly place. The media makes their money off being ugly, perhaps relegating 30 seconds at the end of a broadcast to some “feel good” story… and so your balance and outlook gets skewed. The world is mostly filled with good people doing good things in a day. Turn off the fucking TV, and get out and look at the world around you. Stop letting TV and other media shape your worldview: go shape your own based on getting out and immersing yourself in a life of your own. Force yourself to have a more positive filter and outlook on life. You might just discover good things aren’t so rare.
The engineering of the Remington 700 VTR’s barrel
This post about the Remington 700 VTR’s triangular barrel was an interesting read. I’ve been interested in that rifle, mostly because of the barrel — was it just a marketing gimmick or was there legit engineering behind it. Looks legit. I’d love to try out this rifle sometime.
Updated (June ’09): I was at Cabela’s and they had VTR’s without the muzzle brake. A little research turns up that this is a special run made exclusively for Cabela’s. Take it for whatever it’s worth.
The Benny Hillifier
Because everything is funnier with Yakety Sax as a soundtrack, we have The Benny Hillifier.
There’s also Instant Epic. Or Instant Tragedy.
Sunday Metal – Motörhead
The details are fuzzy, but the image in my memory is clear. I’m a young kid up way past my bedtime. Watching TV. Music videos. This video comes on and the music is loud and fast. There’s this ugly dude singing upwards into a microphone. Something about an iron fist. I didn’t know what to make of it, I didn’t know who it was, but it left an impact on me.
I liked it.
It was some years before I knew that was Motörhead. Without question, one of the icons of rock. While the music may be fast, hard, and loud, at the heart it’s just a lot of blues and soul both musically and lyrically. It’s not some “technical virtuoso heavy metal”; when the band hits the stage Lemmy says “We are Motörhead, and we play rock and roll!”. And rock and roll they do, with everything louder than everyone else.
Testing – Post Mortem
So the blog’s been quiet because I’ve been away from the computer. As I noted before, I spent most of today down in Houston taking the first (of many) tests towards my 2nd degree black belt. So, here’s the post mortem on the day’s events.
I drove down by myself (many people carpool) because I wanted to get a gauge on the drive. I’m hoping in May and August to ride my motorcycle down there (about 150 miles one-way), so I wanted to get a handle on location, issues, and how long it took traveling at a reasonable speed (e.g. on my bike I like to take it slow and easy… enjoy the ride, not be in a rush). I’m looking forward to the ride. Couldn’t ride today because the weather was threatening some ugly rain and while if I’m caught in the rain on my bike that’s one thing, I’m not going to knowingly ride into an unsafe situation.
When I first walked into the facility, it felt weird. The vast majority of people there are brown-black belts working towards their 1st degree black belt, so they are all unfamiliar faces… a vast sea of them. But I saw the other black belts there and some of those faces are familiar (apart from the other folks from my school that were also testing). It’s somewhat like a family reunion and kinda cool that way, to see your distant relatives again and to meet some new ones, so to speak. You go through a lot with these people, and shared experiences can bring people together.
The testing itself was very curriculum oriented today. My test was run by Kwahn Jahng Nim Alex Suh (7th degree) and he ran through our entire curriculum at a very intense pace. The test wasn’t necessarily that physically taxing (due in part to a lot of people and limited space, so you’re crowded), but it was mentally taxing and you really had to stay on your toes and move fast. I actually liked that because it’s different; sure the physical stuff is good, but it’s nice to get a good brain workout now and again… it shows if you really know your stuff and can call it up on demand, because someone on the street coming to stomp your head in isn’t going to pause to let you remember how to defend yourself.
I was worried about my performance due to my ankle. Well, the ankle held up, but in part because I just didn’t let it get abused. I didn’t do a lot of the jump spin inside crescent kicks because those kill the ankle (the impact from landing, the torque from the twist/spin). But I did come out of there with a matched set of blood blisters on the pad of each big toe.
So how did I I feel I did? I did ok. It’s not where I want to be… I usually perform better than this, but I know why I wasn’t on top of my game: other pressures and stress in life, some inner-turmoil about my future in Kuk Sool Won (which has been resolved but caused me to not train as much as I should have the past few months). Here’s what I need to work on:
- Simple memorization of curriculum. The stuff at the beginning, the stuff at the end, they get lots of focus. The stuff in the middle often gets ignored and so without regular practice it fades. I forgot and fumbled on a few techniques today (I prefer to forget and fumble nothing), so I need to just get things back in my head and under my fingers.
- I need to practice sword with my proper sword. The wood practice sword is ok but it’s not as heavy as my nice steel sword. I used steel today and my arm and shoulder muscles tired faster than I liked.
- I ought to do staff spinning and work at least once a week. I need to justify it to myself that the more I do things that improve my wrist strength, that’ll help my handgun shooting too (that Todd Jarrett “grip 20% harder” thing). 😉
- Gotta bring up my overall muscular endurance. I think my reduction in training the past few months coupled with the new smaller dojang (i.e. I can’t really stretch out and get my low long stances.. .I’ve got long legs and when space is tight I just can’t get long and low) led to this.
- It’d be great to be able to do Baek Pahl Ki Hyung 108 times in a row, each time performed better than the previous. A long-term goal perhaps.
Some good things:
- My relaxation was good. I wasn’t too tense and things flowed ok.
- Breathing was well managed too. Relaxation and breath control go a long ways towards your endurance.
- My ankle held up
- I can perform under pressure
- I’m almost done with my curriculum, which I’d love to complete a.s.a.p.. Then I can spend the next year-plus doing nothing but refining it. I look forward to that.
The relaxation and breath control stuff is big for me. It’s about efficiency. If you’re tense and using more muscles than needed you’re going to wear yourself out faster. You’ll use up your energy supply, you’ll need more oxygen, and just be overall harder on your system. The more relaxed, the deeper your breath (i.e. abdomen, and very deeply), the better you fare. I’m getting quite good at managing this.
Some random things:
- Skunks seem to be today’s roadkill of choice. The air was so pleasant on both the drive down and drive back.
- 8-ish hours travelling for 2 hours of testing (and an hour or so for promotions and demos). I do sometimes wonder if the drive is the bigger test. 🙂
- In the promotions today, we actually had a promotion to 6th degree, sorta. He was actually promoted back in October but wasn’t able to make it out at that time. He made it out this weekend, so received his official promotion and such. That was nice.
- The reason he was in town was because this weekend a big seminar is being held at HQ for all school owners and Master-ranks and such. It was really cool to see many of the high-ranking masters from around the nation at the testing. Don’t get to see or visit with these people that often.
All in all, not a bad day. During my drive down I decided that this test, being my first of the cycle, is going to be my baseline. It’s going to set the tone of my training and how my testing will go from here. I will only go up. And I’ve got homework to do to get me there. 🙂
The rules
This is what you get when you’re on a mailing list populated by people that are both computer geeks and gun nuts:
<so-and-so> wrote:
> sudo
Outstanding. I respect a man who wields awesome power responsibly.
1. All root shells are always loaded.
2. Never run as root on a system that you are not authorized to destroy.
3. Be aware of your PATH.
I’m not the original author of this, but for their privacy I’m not posting their name.
Testing
Tomorrow I head to Houston for the day. I’ll be participating in my first test towards my 2nd degree black belt.
In Kuk Sool, testing for black belt ranks is a lengthy process. It is comprised of multiple tests, each test taken once every 3 months. I will probably undergo 6-8 tests before promotion, but promotion isn’t based soley upon number of tests taken as there are other factors (e.g. instructor recommendation/approval). But I went ahead and marked my calender for the next 2 years as there’s no reason not to.
My biggest hope for tomorrow is my ankle making it through. My left ankle has been injured a couple times and doesn’t always cooperate. I’ve been on a diet of Aleve all week to ensure the inflammation is minimized. Depending how my ankle feels it can hamper my ability to kick, both kicking with that foot (and the impact it receives) but moreso using that foot as the planted foot and rotating (e.g. 360º spin kicks). Things that torque the ankle aggravate it the most (yes, I have an expensive brace that I’ll be wearing, but it only does so much good). What makes it worse is the association rents out a volleyball facility for such mass testing, and so the floor is some sort of urethane-coated wood, which doesn’t always play well with bare feet. Granted I don’t want to be slipping everywhere but I also don’t need loads of friction keeping my foot planted and dragging while I try to move. If my ankle can make it through tomorrow, I’ll be alright.
More later….
How to succeed at working from home
As a software engineer, I’m fortunate that my job lends to telecommuting. I’ve been doing so in a formal capacity for almost 9 years and dealing with telecommuting in some manner or other for my entire professional career.
Often when people hear I telecommute I get two responses: 1. Wow that’s so cool, I wish I could do that, 2. But I couldn’t do that because of distractions. Do you want to know what I’ve found to be the keys to successful work at home?
