Life

A bunch of random pictures

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve been wanting to post a bunch of pictures for a while now. So hey…. let’s just put them all up in a single big post.

All pictures can be clicked upon to see larger versions.

Ducks

A few shots of the various neighborhood ducks. The pictures of the ducklings are actually a few weeks old; the ducklings are all much bigger now, but still just have the downy yellow feathers.

Here’s the one mallard hen and her ducklings:

The mallard ducklings are presently going through an awkward phase, where their legs are much longer compared to the rest of their bodies. It’s rather amusing.

One of the muscovy duck hens and her badelynge:

Another muscovy and her group.

That particular one… when the USDA people came to thin the flock, they took 7 of her ducklings (she had 12, lost one somehow, and now only 4 remain). My understanding is they weren’t supposed to take ducklings….

Now with the muscovy population so drastically reduced, we’ve had more not-muscovy ducks coming around. Just yesterday a new couple showed up:

Unfortunately, that’s the best picture I could get of them. They’re very skittish and constantly moving around. We’re guessing by their behavior that the brown/white one is male and the black/white one is female, tho the black/white one is slightly larger. What gets me is I’ve never seen a duck like the black/white one. The picture does not do her justice. The feathers are gorgeous. Lots of subtle coloring. Likely some sort of mallard hybrid. I do wonder exactly what it is, but despite the beautiful plumage I know it’s not a Norwegian Blue.

Texas DPS Firearms Range

For the range qualification portion of the CHL Instructor course, they held it at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Firearms Range in Florence, Texas. It was a pretty nice facility. Here’s some pictures of the pistol range that we used.

Here’s a shot of the left part of the range:

And here’s the right:

There are 60 firing positions, 6 groups of 10.  The first 10 yards or so have that rubbery surface, so it’s solid but there’s some cushion; very nice if you have to be there training all day. Then you can see it’s grass with concrete sidewalks that space out other ranges (e.g. 15 yards, 25 yards). All 60 positions have target frames that can be flipped sideways so you can’t see them, and exposed for set amounts of time. The chief range officer had a remote control and a headset with microphone for giving the range commands; the speakers were also remote speakers placed on the ground every so often behind us. That setup worked quite well.

Here’s a shot of the right side, from back at the parking lot:

There’s a small building to the left, the edge of which you can see. That’s the bathrooms, water fountains, etc..

There were other ranges too, for rifle. A skeet range was also there. One thing we got a kick out of? We saw a deer feeder, and when we first arrived in the morning numerous does came out to feed. I did see some BBQ pits up in the pavilion. I guess they have some fun during the winter. *grin*

Dawson Precision

After the CHL shooting test, I visited Dawson Precision.

Now if you really want to see some pictures of their facility, check out their Facebook page.

But one thing I thought was really cool? Their range/testing room.

You see, it’s a wonderful indoor room. It has a fully capable work bench:

This way when they test out a gun, if it needs a tweak they can tweak it right there. Very nice, well thought out. The shelves on the left hold a host of different ammunition, which is all reloaded on a bunch of Dillon Precision 1050’s that are in the room off to the right. Again, all for testing the guns.

See that chair in the bottom-left corner?

That chair lets you sit at this bench:

It’s a bench. There’s a good rest on it. That big contraption on the wall? It’s a brass catcher. There’s a bucket at the bottom of it. Simple enough, you make sure a fresh empty bucket is placed at the bottom before you test. You test, then once completed you empty the bucket. Makes recycling and sorting the cases really easy. It’s really well put together.

Now, you see that window to the left? Well, if you look closely you’ll see there’s a door and hinges along the top edge. Normally it’s closed. But with the press of a button it raises up and opens out to this:

And from your air-conditioned benchrest, you can shoot all that steel. All your brass is caught. If the gun needs work, you just visit the workbench right behind you. If the steel needs to be reset (some are LaRue resetting targets), then there’s a cord/handle just above you that makes it easy to do right from the comfort of the room.

Folks…. this is awesome. 🙂

Now remember I mentioned that the front sight they installed was different from the one I already had?

Take a look:

On the left is the sight that was installed by Springer Precision. I’m not 100% sure which one it is. On the Springer Precision website work order it just says “Dawson Precision Fixed Sight SET (.100 fiber optic front) target rear”.

On the right is the one that Dawson directly sold me and installed. It is the .205 tall x .100 wide Match (used with DP Fixed Rear), item number 021-019.

I pulled out the calipers and measured. Same width, same height, just different bases. I’ll have to ask about that. I ought to be able to shoot the gun with the new sights soon.

A lovely morning

/ hsoi

Finally slept in this morning (you know, got up at 5 AM…. yes, that’s sleeping in for me). After the past week of waking up quite early, it was nice to get back to a normal sleep schedule.

Everyone else was asleep, but Daughter woke up. We hung out in my office, listened to music. Introduced her to UFO, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin, and more Lenny Kravitz. It’s showing what music was like before Auto-Tune (which she appreciates).

Go downstairs. Look out front and see one muscovy mother and her 4 growing ducklings. Put out some black-oil sunflower seeds for them.

Look out the back of the house. I see one of the local nesting cardinals catching a bug just outside the back door. His mate is with him and she’s flittering her wings and he’s offering her the bug. I watch their little ritual.

Then I look up from them and see one of the does in the greenbelt eating. She moves off a bit and then I see what we’ve been expecting to see — her fawn. We noticed this doe had full teets, so there had to be a baby somewhere; finally got to see it this morning white spots and all. Another doe was also nearby. There’s a third doe that comes around, much smaller than the other two. She’ll probably be by later.

Just something beautiful about the morning. 🙂

Desert Deuce Surplus

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Never heard of Desert Deuce Surplus before, but I wanted to order a couple of pairs of Tru-Spec 24/7 shorts and Desert Deuce came up as a place with them in stock. Submitted an order.

Well, a week went by and I hadn’t received any sort of information about the handling of my order, other than it was received and the money was taken. I phoned, left a message, 24 hours and no callback. I phoned again, got someone on the phone. She looked up my order and was obviously puzzled as to why my order hadn’t been fulfilled. She took my phone number and said she’d call back in 10 minutes. I went about my business and about 30 minutes later she calls back saying my order was going out right now.

So I’m waiting for my order to arrive. It seems the lack of fulfillment was an oversight and I was happy to see it promptly dealt with. We’ll see how things go once the order gets here. But so far, well…. while I’m not thrilled at what went down, I’m willing to let it slide and I’d consider ordering from them again. If nothing else, they’ve got an interesting selection of products — including parts for M35 and 5 ton military trucks!

Updated: The package arrived. Contained 100′ of 550 paracord and the Tru-Spec shorts.

The rope is… well… paracord. Useful stuff.

As for the shorts, I’m pleased! They are pretty much the same as the Tru-Spec 24/7 pants that I like so much, except in shorts form. I haven’t had a chance to pull out the shorts and the pants to side-by-side compare, but I did notice one difference: the side leg pockets. On the pants, the rear bottom corner is pleated (is that the right term?) such that when you have a lot of cargo in the pocket the pocket expands. Thus, the pocket can be VERY roomy. Sometimes that’s good (e.g. picking up lots of range brass), but sometimes it’s annoying because of how the gear can flop on your leg. On the shorts, that corner of the pocket is sewn to the leg so there isn’t as much expansion in the pocket. I think for shorts that’s a good thing.

Anyway, I’m pleased with the shorts!

As for Desert Deuce, they did what they said they would. Again, I didn’t get the best first impression of them, but they made things right and did so promptly. I wouldn’t be against using them again.

Rules for Instructors? Or just good rules for life?

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I still don’t know if I’m going to study Aikido, but I am doing a lot of research on the topic. I came across these “13 Rules for Aikido Instructors” (yes I know, they only list 12). What I found interesting was, they weren’t just good rules for Aikido instructors, but generally were good humble rules for life. You may have to modify the wording slightly (e.g. #3 becomes simply “do not criticize”), but it’s pretty solid.

I opted to reprint them here, with some minor formatting changes. They are things I want to remember for myself.

Continue reading →

Coda

/ hsoi

Today was an emotional shithouse.

The whole duck thing? Sure, I know they’re just ducks. But as the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I knew I had some attachment to them (I knew the kids had a heavy attachment to them), but I guess I had more than I thought. Imagine someone walking into your home and taking your family pets away. I doubt you’d find that an enjoyable experience. I keep finding myself going to the front window, looking out on the lawn expecting to see the ducks there but now realizing there aren’t any. Seeing them throughout the day brought such joy to us; looking out the empty window just brings sadness. Feelings of betrayal, anger, sadness… on the one hand I feel kinda silly for feeling this way, but I didn’t ask to feel this way… it’s just how things are and I accept my feelings.

Then I try to get work done and the code rewrite I attempted just didn’t pan out; in fact, while on paper it should have been better, in reality it turned out exponentially worse (performance was abysmal). That’s two days of work down the tubes, but such is R&D. I had such high hopes. Alas.

But while most of the day went wrong, towards the end it got better.

The neighbor that I know called for the duck removal? He came by the house to check on the boys. He apologized for what he did. I wasn’t there, but Wife tells me that she saw genuine remorse in his eyes. I have to give him a lot of respect for coming by like he did. That took a lot of guts. While it doesn’t fix things, we’re all human, we all make mistakes, and if we don’t learn to forgive then well… what sort of person are we?

Then I capped off the day with a glass of 2007 Grape Creek Merlot and a Rocky Patel 1990 petit corona cigar. Sat with Wife in the backyard and watched the kiddos having a blast with their squirt guns and running through the slip and slide. Two does wandered into the greenbelt for their evening meal. We watched them, they watched us for quite a while. It was most peaceful and satisfying.

Of ducks and crying children

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

So we have a large population of muscovy ducks in our neighborhood.

There are some neighbors that don’t like that reality. They’ve contacted the neighborhood management association to see what can be done about it. Word was they were going to get a group out here to trap some of the ducks and relocate them to farm ponds.

My children were not happy. Admittedly, I’m not thrilled with it either.

Remember that one mother duck that was eaten a couple of weeks ago? We relocated 6 of her viable eggs to another mother across the way. Those eggs hatched just yesterday. It was a joyous event!

This morning I go out to refresh the water dish, as 2 mallard drakes were in the yard. I see the mother across the way emerge and 9 little ducklings behind her. I walk to the edge of my yard to get a better look and then I see a man standing in a neighbor’s driveway watching the ducks. I keep an eye on him.

I clean up my yard a bit, go to throw some things away. The guy engages me in conversation. I see by his hat and shirt he’s with the USDA. He’s been out here for the past 2 weeks counting and observing. And this morning, they’re trapping.

Daughter and Wife are out of the house, but Oldest and Youngest got to observe what was going on. Their first tip-off? One of the hens with 5 ducklings is nowhere to be seen, but her 5 ducklings are all huddled together alone and peeping. They went looking, then saw the men with nets chasing down the ducks.

The wailing of broken-hearted children commenced. I didn’t stop it. I let the men hear it, I let the neighbors I know in part responsible for this hear it.

We asked the men if we could look at the ducks they had captured to see if the one mother was in there. We couldn’t tell given the nature of the cages. They had captured some other babies too, but we don’t know which or whom. We tried to get the men to take the 5 orphans with them because likely the mother was in their truck, but they wouldn’t engage us in conversation; one wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Nice, but I can’t blame them… they’re just doing their job and I was hitting them with an emotional attack.

I managed to capture the 5 orphans. We’re going to take them to the Austin Wildlife Rescue.

Talking with another neighbor, he mentioned wanting to catch the one mother with the 9 ducklings and relocate her to a farm pond. I wondered why, no response.

Yes, I know and even the children know the realities of it all. We’ve explained it to them, helped them understand the practical reasons for why this has to happen. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. These ducks have a lot of personality and yes, even I’ve grown attached. Someone coming along and taking them away, it hurts. Again, we understand the realities of it all, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less, especially for the kiddos.

Just furthers our desire to move to the country.

Woke up in a fright

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

You know what you don’t want to hear in the middle of the night?

Your children letting out panicked, blood-curdling screams.

*sigh*

Kiddos were “camping out”, sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room (it’s just something they like to do, and it’s harmless). Daughter reports that Oldest started to fidget and itch. He was groggy and not sure what was going on, but something was bugging him. He wanders into our room, wakes up Wife, and asks if she could look at his neck, if she might see anything.

She sure did.

A scorpion.

It was a striped bark scorpion, very common in Texas. We get them inside the house on occasion. Seems the scorpion was taking a midnight stroll across Oldest’s body. Once everyone noticed what it was, the screams and cries went out. Sure freaked me out to be woken up in that manner.

There’s a small welt on Oldest’s neck, another on his chest, and one on his hand. He’s doing OK, it’s just annoying him at this point. His siblings both got bad sunburns last weekend, he just got some light scorpion stings. Everyone’s happy. 😉

How it turned out

/ hsoi

So…. how did the brisket from the new smoker’s maiden voyage turn out?

Pretty good!

The meat itself was tender, juicy, good flavor. After 10 hours in the 200º-250º range, it did well.

There was a little bit more blackening on the exterior than I cared for, made things bitter, but avoid that and it was quite good. I admit I didn’t watch the actual meat as much as I normally did. See, with the Weber I had to take off the lid to add fuel thus I always checked the meat. When I was doing the initial burn in this new smoker I realized how the big lid was well… a big lid. If you open it, all that heat and smoke was quickly lost, so I did my best to NOT open the lid to look at the meat. Just trust the time (you know it’s going to be at least 6-8 hours), but by then it was too late.

A few things learned about the new smoker:

  • It’s certainly not as airtight as I’d like it to be. One gaping issue is the lid has holes in the side for a rotisserie, but then just little seal issues here and there, some due to lack of fit, some because it’s just sheet metal and might have a slight bend in it. I got what I paid for. It wasn’t horrible, but someday I’ll want good sealing.
  • The lack of airtightness was rather evident when I was trying to cool off the fire a bit. The firebox door vent ended up being totally closed and the chimney vent almost closed, yet more than enough oxygen was getting in to keep it burning.
  • I do not like the big-ass lid. Or rather, I don’t like that it opens all the way up letting all the heat and smoke out. I’ll want to get a model where the body is mostly closed and the lids are just “small” door openings. Next question then is, one big door or multiple smaller ones? I’m thinking multiple smaller.
    • But on the same token, I do like the roominess under the lid. I need to try some beer-can chicken under there, because there’s certainly room. Thanksgiving turkey will have a lot of room too. I’m probably going to have to ditch the warming rack, which I don’t see much need or use for anyway.
  • Cooking with pure wood sure is different. Used to be I used charcoal as the primary source and just added a wood chunk or some wet wood chips for the smoke flavor. But this? I started with charcoal then put a small log of oak on. I was able to keep the temps just fine using small logs of oak the whole time, no more charcoal. I’m not sure if that contributed to the black/bitter; I recall one time I used mesquite chunks the whole time and by the end it was way too strong a flavor, almost bitter. Have to get used to using just wood, plus I need to go buy another cord or two. 🙂
  • As for the black/bitter, could just be a need for some foil earlier on in the process (and not sweating the lid issue), could be the wood, could have been the brown sugar in the rub (I just used a rub recipe in a book I have… which I now remember I didn’t like the last time I used it, but I was in a hurry). Half the fun is finding that perfect combination.

Anyway, the main thing here is the Hondo itself. No, it’s not perfect, but it seems to do the job just fine. I’m going to see what else I can do to tweak it.

My new smoker

/ hsoi / 11 Comments

When I bought my first house so many years ago, one of the first things I put in the backyard was a Weber kettle grill. Life was good. The way I grew up, that sort of “outdoor cooking over a fire” just meant grilling. To “BBQ” or to “grill” were interchangeable terms. And if you were smoking something, it typically involved something in rolling papers or a pipe. But you can’t live in Texas and not come to learn that grilling is one thing, BBQ-ing is another, and smoking is yet a third thing.

Some years ago I bought one of those upright bullet smokers. I hated it. I ended up keeping it for a number of years tho because it made for a good storage container to keep my wood chips dry.

I came to realize that most of my uses of the Weber grill were indirect grilling, so I thought why not make the best of what I’ve got and use it for BBQ’ing and smoking? I bought a proper thermometer, drilled a hole in the lid, and now that I could better control and monitor the heat, I actually made out for a good many years using the Weber grill for smoking. The main problem? The grill surface is small as it is, so when you smoke you lose a lot of what little grill space you have so you just can’t do a whole lot. I’d have to smoke smaller briskets or only one rack of ribs. But I pressed on because I couldn’t justify buying something new while the Weber was still kicking.

Well, the Weber is no longer kicking. It finally wore out enough that I cannot control the heat adequately, so it’s time for a replacement.

As I started to shop for a replacement I knew what I wanted to look for: a big, heavy, offset-side-box smoker. I wanted a lot of grill surface area so one could hold a lot of food or just larger food e.g. a whole feral hog hind quarter. It needed to focus on smoking, but some grilling ability would be useful. No need for an upright box as I won’t be doing much stuff that hangs. And I wanted something high quality, because I know if I got something good that it would last me for decades.

Then I saw the prices on these things. Cheapest ones might be $1000-$1500, and of course you could go up from there. Yikes! I just don’t have the ability to drop that kind of money right now.

New Smoker. Click to embiggen.

So I compromised and have a New Braunfels Hondo Smoker. New Braunfels Smokers went out of business I believe about 8 years ago, but Char-Broil bought their IP and still sells under their brand name. It would appear that Char-Broil’s American Gourmet Deluxe Offset Smoker is the same thing. And it cost me only $150.

Yes. It’s cheap Chinese crap. Yes, it’s somewhat thin sheet metal. Yes, it’s got cheap plastic wheels. Yes, I figure the firebox is going to burn out within a few years of heavy use. Yes it doesn’t seal tight enough. Yes I had to buy a couple proper thermometers and install them myself. But you know what? It only cost me $150 (and $20 for the 2 thermometers).

The smoker, lids open. Click to embiggen.

What convinced me to do it? The Internet. I started my general research into new smokers and in that general searching this smoker (or models just like it) kept coming up and getting pretty good reviews. Yes people admit it has limitations, it is what it is, you get what you pay for. But that for that money, it’s actually not too shabby. Furthermore, a guy wrote up an article about a few inexpensive modifications to make that really help the quality. I haven’t made the modifications because it looks like my version of the Hondo is “new and improved”, having a large tray within the body so you could use it as a big charcoal grill, plus there’s a warming rack in the lid. I’m going to try it out as it is and experiment with what I’ve got because the coal tray could work as the heat shield and deflector… don’t know, will need to experiment. And really, experimenting is half the fun.

Close-up of the interior (click to embiggen). Note the inner tray? That's for charcoal to use the thing as a grill. I'm going to play with it as a heat shield (yes, the slant is my intentional first experiment).

The way I see it? It’s training wheels. Yes, I know how to grill. Yes, I know how to BBQ and smoke. But I haven’t used this sort of setup before. So why not buy something inexpensive to help me learn about this specific cooking implement. It will also help me learn what I like and don’t like, what I want and don’t want. That way when I do go to plop down a big chunk of change for a custom smoker (new, or even a used one off craigslist) I can know exactly what I want and don’t want and be able to buy just the thing that will keep me happy for the rest of my life. I’ll feel better buying this way than shelling out a lot of money now for more expensive training wheels.

A few days ago I pulled a beef brisket out of the deep freeze. Last night I applied a dry rub and let her sit in the fridge overnight. This morning, I put her on the smoker for the maiden voyage. Started with charcoal but put a small log of oak for fuel and flavor. I am glad I bought two thermometers because the temperature difference between the left and right sides is significant (again, playing with heat shields will be critical here; someone also suggested putting a few heavy bricks in the bottom to help with heat control), but it leaves about 2/3 of the grill area free for use, so that’s good enough for now. Been slowly adjusting the vents to keep the temperature where I want it. But so far so good. This brisket may not turn out primo, but it’s all part of the learning and fun.

We’ll know in about 8 hours. 🙂

The smoker, maiden brisket inside.