Shiner Beer. 100 years of crafting some good stuff. 🙂
Here’s to 100 more.
Life
Quote for the day
You know how to tell that you’re on the right side of a debate? When you’re not concerned with having all the data available, good and bad, because you know that even the statistical noise won’t harm your argument.
Returning to normal
Dad visited first half of last week. Mom and Little Sister visited second half of last week.
It was great to see them all, especially since it had been too long since our last visit.
But oh, I’m tired. Wife is tired. Kids are tired.
Today, we get things back in order and back to normal. But I almost wish I had another few days off work so I could recover from my “vacation”; funny how that tends to happen, thus why my preferred vacation is just doing nothing. 🙂
Blogging should return to normal too.
Smoked Turkey
The past some years I’ve been smoking a turkey for Thanksgiving.
Let’s get the main joke out of the way…. how do you smoke a turkey? really big rolling papers. Or some have said since I live in Austin, I could use a bong or other sort of pipe. Ha ha ha. Joke over. 🙂
It started out of necessity: Continue reading
Lessons from the hunt
On my first deer hunt I learned a lot of things.
What follows is a list of things I learned. It’s in no particular order. It’s probably far from comprehensive. But it is a list of things I learned. And while some things are specific to hunting or shooting, some things are just applicable to anything in life.
Tourist in my own town
My Dad and his wife are in town visiting for a few days.
Dad is always on the go. For someone his age he’s so go-go-go that he tires out me, Wife, and Kiddos. 🙂 But it’s good to see him and it also forces us, every time he comes to visit, to think of new things to go see and do. Thus we finally get to do some of those things that you never do unless someone visits.
For instance, lived in this town how many years? And it wasn’t until some months ago at my buddy W’s wedding rehearsal dinner at Shoreline Grill that I got to see the famous Congress Street Bridge bats. My kids have never seen the bats, tho they do get to see some bats here and there because a few must live in our neighborhood as we see some bats flying at evening twilight from time to time. So one plan we made was to go see the bats.
One reason I wanted to post about this was to get more information about the bats out there. A big reason why I hadn’t taken the kids to see the bats was because I couldn’t figure out some of the logistical details like: when do they come out? (about sunset) where can you watch them? (anywhere around the bridge but…) where can you park? (parking lot of the Austin-American Statesman, which then has a little hill at the south-east corner of the bridge where you can sit and watch them, all for free). Just little logistical details like that. I’d search around and not be able to find anything like this. Oh sure I’d find lots that talked about the bats, just not covering logistical details. The best thing I finally discovered was the “bat hotline” at 512-416-5700 x3636. It’s a recording that tells what’s going on with the bats, some information about them, and about what time the bats are flying.
While we were not in peak season (it’s usually during warmer months that there is peak flight), certainly 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats still need to eat! We had lunch at Freebirds World Burrito, played 36 holes of golf at Peter Pan Mini-Golf (I finished both courses, each scoring 50, with a couple holes-in-one, and coming in 1st place; my Dad came in 2nd place; Daughter did pretty well too), then it was about 5:00 PM and with sun setting within the hour we opted to head over to the Austin-American Statesman’s building off the south-east corner of the Congress Ave (now Ann Richards) Bridge. Parking was no problem. A little walk down the hike-and-bike trail and we found the little grassy hill right by the bridge. Lots of other people were there, all waiting for the bats. You could hear them all “chirping” under the bridge. It was pretty cool. I kept remarking how I just spent 3 days waiting on animals to appear, I was getting kinda tired of that. 😉 Eventually a few bats started to appear, zipping right overhead. Then, the stream started. From where we were we could just see an endless stream of bats coming out from under the bridge. I do mean endless. It was wild to watch.
One tip I gave my kids was there were 2 ways you could watch. One, just hold your eyes still, and you’ll watch all the bats zooming by in a blur. Two, move your eyes with the bats and while you may only “see them” for a second or two, the complementary motion of bat and eyeball in the same direction will make the bat look “slower” and thus you’ll get a clearer picture of the bat and not just a blur going by. When I told this to the Kids they all appreciated it, especially Youngest because now he felt like he could really see the bats better. Tip for you parents.
After a while well… that was enough. We headed back to the car and over to Threadgill’s World Headquarters for some dinner.
Good times.
Errand Day
Got lots of errands to do today.
One thing on my list is loading up 20 rounds of 9mm on my reloading equipment. I cobbled together a base for a powder throw (pics later), so I should finally be able to do a full set of reloading on my own equipment.
More later.
Random stuff
From today… just some random bits of things.
iPhone
I’m peeved that my iPhone went dead. I have no idea what caused the sudden drain of battery. Google turns up this isn’t an unheard of thing and hypotheses are some apps just are poor at battery management. That perhaps somehow I put the phone to bed with particular apps still running and someone sucked the battery dry. Don’t know, but oh well.
Managing Unknown Contacts
To understand the term “Managing Unknown Contacts” (MUC) see here or here. I failed at this this morning. *sigh* When I left the house this morning I stopped into the drug store to get some food and drink to eat during the match. When I went in I saw a girl (probably 18-25 years old) gathering her stuff on a bench outside the store. I go inside, do my thing, I come back out to my car and the girl approaches me. Initially I was stand-off-ish and unwilling to help her, but she ultimately said she just wanted directions. I answered her question and she went on her way. So, it was probably nothing.
However, I got in the car and realized I failed MUC. I didn’t move well, I didn’t use my hands right (e.g. fence), wrong dialogue. I know why: I was preoccupied with the match. Bad bad bad me. *sigh*
CHL
I am surprised at the number of people who have CHL’s but don’t carry. So… why do you have a CHL?
People at the match seemed surprised that I came to the match carrying and that I wanted to leave the match carrying. They were surprised at my carry. I was surprised at their surprise, and at their lack of carry.
I want to start asking people who have a CHL why they have a CHL if they don’t carry… and carry always (apart from legal or other such reasons).
Reloading
I got to try a Hornady Lock-n-Lock AP. I’m sold. No the Dillon isn’t bad, but there’s no question the LnL AP is evolution.
Walked away with a LOT of 9mm brass today (lots of people didn’t want their brass). Happy me.
Match People
I forgot to mention about the match. I was surprised at the level of shooters. I figured it was a local club and that it might not be that hot… maybe one or two guys, but that’d be it. I was floored at the number of people with “sponsor” shirts on, race guns, and other very serious gear and really into it. Lots of quality shooters. It was good to watch them and how they went about things, from how people choose to handle the course of fire (I like that about IPSC, vs. IDPA) to how they shot (e.g. the steady cadence in particular strings of the stage). Or just being impressed with how fast some of these guys are.
Family
I love my wife. She supports me. She is a rock for me.
Making Lemonade
This weekend marks the opening of the (firearm) deer hunting season in Texas.
And I won’t be a part of it.
*sigh*
All that work on the lease, working towards this point. And I can’t capitalize on it. My first opening weekend.
*sigh*
Why not? Work obligations. To be fair, no one at work is forcing me to do this. I spoke with a co-worker about a problem the product is presently experiencing, and given the scope of the problem, the customer requirements, the greater implications for relations and contracts and revenue and so on well… in my mind the only right thing to do is stay home and work on the problem.
I’m mostly doing it out of obligation to myself. I just feel that’s the right thing to do. As soon as the fix is completed and given to the QA department, you better believe I’ll be out hunting. The rut is on and I don’t want to miss it. I already put in for a day off (to have made for a longer weekend), so if it means mid-week next week I just take a single day and spend it out in the stand, then that will have to do.
It’s life. These things happen. You roll with it. And in this case, I may be able to make some lemonade.
You see, due to all the rain we’ve been having the action shooting bays at the Austin Rifle Club have been soggy and any Steel and IPSC matches have been cancelled for the past some months. Finally the rain has held off long enough for ARC to get in and repair the bays, and so this weekend ALSPPC won’t be holding an IPSC match: they’ll be holding 2 IPSC matches! One on Saturday, one on Sunday. If you read this blog regularly you know I’ve been trying to get out to competition but the weather and range issues or some other 3rd thing always prevented it. But now it’s here, and if workload is such that I wouldn’t be able to go hunt, I ought to be able to at least slip away for half a day and shoot my first IPSC match.
Don’t know how it will go just yet, but here’s hoping for a little lemonade this weekend.
Updated: I want to go on public record saying, Jon you’re a good guy.
Father Son Time
Work ran late tonight. Consequently I wasn’t going to make my martial arts class in time. *sigh*
So let’s make the best of it. I headed to the garage to fiddle with the reloading gear. 🙂 Since it’s a single-stage press I’m going to set it up for one task, then do as much of that task as possible. In this case, put a 9mm resizing die on there and go through ALL of my 9mm brass and deprime and resize it.
As I got rolling, Wife and Kids came home. Oldest saw what I was doing and came over.
“Can I try?”
“Sure.”
Gave him the basic instructions to move the handle through its full range of motion. Don’t rush it. Got to point out a few things, teach him a few things. Even encountered a Berdan primed case and got to show him the difference.
Oldest just sat at the press, putting in an old case, cranking the handle, taking out the reshaped and deprimed case, lather, rinse, repeat. He just kept doing it with no signs of stopping. Seemed happy doing it too. So I set about better organizing everything on the bench, sorting some things out, cleaning some things up.
Oldest just kept working the press.
We talked. Cracked jokes.
I took over for a bit. I stopped for some reason then Oldest snaked his way in and started working the press again. Go figure.
I eventually cut back in. Gave him my tub of non-usable brass and told him to get a pair of pliers out and crush them to ensure they don’t get used. He had fun with that. Told him to get the big pliers out for increased leverage and he really had fun with that. 🙂 I worked the press, watching him squish brass with glee and listened to him explain to me the differences between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class levers. I know what they are, but it doesn’t matter as I’m not listening to him to learn about levers… I’m just listening to him because he’s my Son and has something to say.
And so there we were in the garage. Father and Son. Talking, joking, working, playing… and sometimes just sitting in silence.
Oldest asked me if I was having fun reshaping the brass. I said that I was neutral about it. It’s repetitive, technically it’s boring. But I know it’s going to be good work and serve a useful end, so I’m good with it all. But that really, what I was enjoying more than anything was just spending time with him.
He seemed to like that.
I think I liked it more. 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 