Life

Critters

/ hsoi

This exceptional, history-making drought in Texas is causing massive pressure on critters.

There’s a muscovy duck that laid her eggs in our bushes. Two days ago they finally hatched and we now have 14 ducklings, which seem to be doing fine. However hopeful I am of their survival to adulthood, I’m not expecting it. They have decent shelter, they will have water and food, but it’s predators that I’m betting will reduce their numbers. There just isn’t much food around, and ducklings are food.

The other morning I saw a doe in the backyard that I’ve never seen before, distinctive by the fact her face was much blacker than any whitetail I’ve ever seen. I’m sure she’s from around these parts, but pushing further than her normal range in search of food. The greenbelt no longer has the natural food supply because there’s no rain, and the heat’s drying everything up.

Over the past some months we’ve had stories of feral hogs coming into neighborhoods, tearing up lawns. Not surprising because they’re just trying to find food and water. But these reports have usually been from neighborhoods on the outskirts of town.

Now we’re getting reports of coyotes coming into town, going after pets. Hey, they’re pets to us, food to a yote.

And now, there’s news reports of a bison on the loose.

Yes, a bison. This is actually in my general area and depending where he travels it’s possible I could look out the back of my house some morning and see him. I hope they’re able to catch him, but I reckon it’ll be tough because he too he going to keep pressing on as much and as hard as he can in search of food and water.

Something’s gotta give…. *sigh*

on training

/ hsoi

‎”When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn’t matter. Am I tired? That doesn’t matter either. Then willpower will be no problem.”

~ Emil Zatopek, Czech Olympic athlete

(seen on Facebook)

The sights and sounds of morning

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Many people cannot fathom how I can be a morning person.

When I stepped out of my house this morning to walk to the gym, the sun was just starting to rise… hadn’t peeked over the horizon, but light was coming up. Basically, it was light enough to see, but not enough to legally hunt deer. 😉

I look up and see about a dozen Mexican Free-tailed bats flying around. Usually we might see only one or two, so seeing this many was quite a treat. I called back into the house to have everyone come out and watch. As I continued my walk to the gym, obviously the bats were all around the greater neighborhood as I was able to still see them feeding.

Then I hear one of my favorite morning sounds: the Black-bellied whistling duck. There were 8 flying in formation, circling around the greater neighborhood. They’re around all the time so they’re nesting somewhere nearby.

Otherwise, the morning was unusually quiet. No one else out jogging. Only a couple of cars drove by.

Just quiet.

Peaceful.

Only the sounds of nature.

Puts a contented smile on your face.

That’s one reason I love mornings.

Xeriscaping

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

When we bought our first house, despite years of hating landscaping and lawn care,  I had my own lawn and felt it was time to become Hank Hill and have the prettiest yard on the block.

That didn’t last long.

Mother Nature, she will always win.

The reality of living in Central Texas is it’s hot and dry. Oh sure, some people manage to have green grassy lawns down here, but they usually have lots of shade plus spend a lot of time and money to irrigate their yard. I’ve had varying amounts of shade, but never enough; I certainly don’t have enough money to budget for heavy watering.

Even if I did have the money to keep my yard flooded, I’ve always felt there was something wrong in doing so. This is the water we need for drinking and basic life needs. Texas has gone through numerous droughts, and the one we’re in now is exceptional and could go down as the worst ever. I just cannot justify watering the yard when water is a finite resource and we need it for more important things. I’d rather have water to drink, and if water is going to go onto vegetation I’d rather the farmers have it.

Alas, I live in the city… I have some semblance of a HOA to deal with… and I admit to not liking erosion nor an ugly house and neighborhood. So, some sort of “yard” is necessary.

I never thought I’d do this… but I’m going to try xeriscaping.

It’s just not aesthetically pleasing to me, because it implies a lot of desert, and I do like the look of plush green. Xeriscaping invokes images of sand, rocks, cactus… not much color, a lot of hard and sharp lines and materials. But it isn’t exclusively this way. For one, a central notion of xeriscaping is to use native plants. I never was a fan of going to Home Depot and getting whatever they sold because they are rarely native and able to handle the environment. But I also wasn’t a huge fan of the way a lot of native plants looked. That has changed and I now find great beauty in the native plants of this area — the key is exposure. So many of the yards and commercial landscapes go for what is common, what is easy to find. But if you look deeper, especially using local nurseries, you can find an amazing depth of plants that look beautiful, give year-round color and interest, attract desirable wildlife, and work in the high heat/sun and low water environment that we live in. For example, some years ago I tore out a bunch of shrubs and planted Barbados Cherry. They’ve thrived, they look gorgeous when flowering and fruiting, attract a lot of birds, provide a lot of color throughout most of the year… and I haven’t seen them anywhere else in Austin (tho I’m sure other people have them).

The key? You cannot start out picking plants you WANT. You have to pick plants that are appropriate. You have to consider size issues, sun exposure, water availability, animals (attract, repel, etc.), and so on. Austin’s Grow Green Guide is quite useful. Once you narrow down to what’s appropriate, then you can choose what you like. The Barbados Cherry were not something I would have picked if given the choice, but they fit best for the particular situation and have turned out to be wonderful.

Another useful thing? Using a good landscaper. We’re using Fertile Ground Organic Gardens. Yes, it’s run by an old friend of mine, but she’s done work for us in the past and it’s always been excellent. I’m using her not because of friendship, but because of solid work and creative design. Look at their website and you’ll see examples of their work.

The thing is… our front yard is always going to suffer. There’s a good portion that gets sun most of the day, and a fair portion that gets sun all day long. Consequently, no turf grass can survive. In drought like we tend to have most years, the grass eventually dies off and all we have is either burnt, dead grass, and then very tolerant weeds grow. It’s ugly. I hate it. And the weeds can’t even grow enough to cover for soil retention. So after debating solutions for the past few years, Wife and I decided… let’s try xeriscaping.

I’ll try to document how it goes, with pictures. Should be interesting. 🙂

Parental Controls, iPods, iTunes, and you….

/ hsoi

So I find out the hard way that the Parental Controls for iTunes and iPod’s don’t apply to each other.

That is, in the iTunes.app you can set Parental Controls to restrict the content your children have access to. Well, it seems that only applies to accessing the iTunes Store via the iTunes.app. If there’s a device involved, like an iPod, then you must also set the Restrictions on that device. They don’t apply to each other, which makes sense now that I think about it, but it didn’t occur to me when I was first setting things up. I only set stuff on the app thinking it would carry over… and in a way, that would seem logical to do.

But alas.

And we got to learn the hard way.

All is good tho. Something for us all to grow on.

Why can’t things work the first time?

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

Bought a Samsung Blu-Ray player. The HDMI port didn’t fully work (no video signal). Had to return it and so far the second one seems OK.

I’m presently hooking up the new printer (Epson Workforce 63o). First document I print it printed at 50% size and I can’t figure out why. Tried to photocopy and it came out horrible. Running a printer head cleaning, print head realignment, but why should a brand new device need that??

Does anyone understand the notion of “quality” any more?

*sigh*

Draw comfort from discomfort – part 2

/ hsoi

A couple days ago I posted about drawing comfort from discomfort and how it’s through discomfort that we grow and become better at whatever we do in life.

Flipping through my Facebook feed and an article was posted on the very same topic. The article itself is a couple of years old, but it dovetails nicely with what I wrote previously.

Discomfort is a good thing. It toughens you up, and it’s often a sign of good things to come. For example, discomfort in the gym when trying a new exercise leads to new muscle growth.

When I feel all that weight across my shoulders when I’m squatting, I feel like it’s going to kill me, but I know it won’t. I know it will make me stronger. Heck, yesterday I had to pick an awkward, bulky, heavy object off the floor, one that I’ve picked up in the past and struggled with. When I picked it up yesterday it was no problem. Once it was up in my arms I said to myself “…and that’s why we deadlift”.

 

By avoiding discomfort you miss out on some of the best things in life. There’s an old saying about critics that goes like this, “If you want to avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.” The same can be said of discomfort:

If you want to avoid discomfort, do nothing, experience nothing, be nothing.

You won’t be uncomfortable. But you won’t really be alive either.

Seek discomfort. Do front squats. Talk to that girl.

Take risks.

Live.

 

Draw comfort from discomfort

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Only people willing to work to the point of discomfort on a regular basis using effective means to produce that discomfort will actually look like they have been other-than-comfortable most of the time. You can thank the muscle magazines for these persistent misconceptions, along with the natural tendency of all normal humans to seek reasons to avoid hard physical exertion.

— Mark Rippetoe

Granted, Rippetoe is talking about weightlifting and exercise, but it really holds for anything and everything in life.

You watch those ice skaters during the Winter Olympics, and they look so effortless; that’s only because you haven’t seen how they have to train all those years prior to that one performance. Someone that is comfortable in front of a crowd, speaking in public… they had to do a lot of work to get up there and make it seem so natural. When you watch someone shooting a gun, like top competitors such as Rob Leatham or Julie Golob, they look so cool under pressure because they’ve put themselves under a lot of pressure. That’s how they got to the top of their game.

When it comes to self-defense, like Mark alludes to, people are unwilling to seek discomfort. Can you think of a more uncomfortable situation that being attacked? How do you think you can overcome this discomfort? You have to put yourself into it.

Try competition shooting, or at least, take shooting classes and realize that everyone else in class is watching you, sizing you up, and comparing you. Hopefully that class might have some drills or activities that put pressure on you, like having everyone shoot a drill solo while the rest of the class looks on, or doing “shoot off” elimination drills, etc..

Take some boxing classes… no cardio boxing, but something where you’ll actually get hit in face and gut.

Take some Force-on-Force training classes, where you get put into life-like scenarios and have to decide when and how to use your gun or other defensive skills and tactics.

Life is full of discomfort. Sometimes you can ignore and avoid it, but many discomforts will hound you. The only way to rid yourself of the discomfort will be to become comfortable with it.

Texas man attacked by feral hog

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

 

“He came to me, and he was literally flying, and I jumped up on the gate,” Fox said. “But I did not jump high enough or fast enough, and he hit me.”

The hog’s tusk dug several inches into Fox’s calf. A doctor later closed the wound with more than 100 stitches.

 

 

Full story. (h/t to CHLGuy’s Twitter feed)

Hard to say exactly why he got rushed, but with water and thus also food being so hard to come by right now, critters are wandering further, getting more difficult to deal with. They are also showing up in urban areas.

Your pepper spray and cell phone and “self-defense clinic” aren’t going to do you much good here… even a good pair of Nike’s won’t help you for very long. A .44 Magnum on the other hand….