The drought is so bad in Austin, the city just went to stage 2 water restrictions.
One thing I’m happy about is that while you cannot wash off surfaces like sidewalks, you can if it’s to remove a health hazard. All the duck poop that we get on the walkway up to our front door due to the visiting waterfowl, I’m glad I can still wash it away. It’s be horrible if we couldn’t.
If any of you have some extra rain, please send it our way. 🙂
I have a fondness for InSights Training‘s ABC’s: Always Be Cool.
It’s a mode of being that helps to keep you out of trouble. Always Be Cool. If trouble happens to come your way, you need a level head and a demeanor to help you get out of the situation. Always Be Cool.
There was a recent discussion about dealing with police in the context of concealed carry (e.g. how to produce your license/permit, how to notify the officer that you are carrying, etc. in a way that won’t freak out the officer). Any time a police officer has to pull someone over, they’re going to be tense because they don’t know what to expect and must prepare themselves for the worst. If you are tense, if your body language is anxious, the officer is going to see it and will react accordingly. You are doing nothing wrong (other than your moving violation), you’re just tense because it’s a tense situation by its nature, but still… what can you do to make things better? Always Be Cool.
From Greg Hamilton:
I should of course add YOUR body language, demeanor, speech, etc. must be calm and nonchalant if you want the officer to be also. If you are stressed, anxious, etc you immediately lead the officer there.
[…]
InSights ABC’s: Always Be Cool; first step of being cool is LOOKING cool.
Calm demeanor, natural non-forced smile, normal tone of voice, all lead to you being “believed” They also produce a calm, matter-of-fact, just doing my job demeanor in the officer.
The thing is, this goes far beyond interactions with police officers. It enters into the realm of interactions with anyone and everyone. If you come across calmly, smiling, looking like a nice and cool person, you will be perceived as a cool person and it makes so many things in life go smoother for you.
Whatever you’re doing and dealing with in life, just remember to Always Be Cool. It can take you pretty far.
Matthew, over at Straight Forward in a Crooked World, has an entry titled “Failure to Comply.”
It’s a compelling read, and you’d do well to take a few minutes to read it, then a few minutes more to think about what he wrote.
There’s one thing he wrote that really caught my attention:
We are taught early on and reminded as adults constantly that violence is bad and that it never solves anything, and that no one wins in a fight. This is simply untrue. In fact it is horribly untrue. This is the result of political correctness infesting everything. It skews how we set and train our minds to win.
Violence does solve problems.
Reactive violence can and does routinely stop evil offensive violence. When you are left (regardless of your sex) on the ground and fighting to win to keep your life violence is the answer…and it is the only answer. And you should not apologize nor back peddle for that.
It made me think about my children and what I teach them.
When I started my parenting career, we opted to do the “no hitting” thing. There was no spanking, we taught Oldest not to hit, period. Basically, violence was completely frowned upon for any and every reason, in every context, every angle, you name it.
It didn’t take long before we abandoned that to a small part. Spanking came around. Why? Because you can’t reason with a 2 year old; they just don’t know enough about life to understand greater things. We didn’t and don’t beat our children, but all living things respond in a simple manner: seek pleasure, avoid pain. We saved a swat on the behind for those times when you really needed to enforce a negative consequence to some action. That is, spanking was not the general punishment; it was reserved for times when you needed to make a strong negative impression because there was no natural negative consequence of the action. For example, child runs into the street; that could warrant a swat on the behind because there’s no question there could be tragic consequences of that action — it must not happen again. However, the action itself has no natural negative consequence (apart from the undesirable of the child getting hit by a car), so you must impart a negative consequence so the child will not undertake that action again. The child must know that action leads to painful consequences so they will avoid partaking in actions that lead to pain. Political correctness compells me to say that we also are into positive reinforcement; frankly that garners a lot more compliance and a happier household. But sometimes, a spanking is the right and only answer. Heck, even my old college roommate just went through a little “my son got whacked” situation. He’s still of the “no spanking” camp, but there’s no question the little whack his son got straightened him up and made for a better long-term experience.
When I started getting serious about self-defense, martial arts study, firearms study, I realized that when our kids hit each other, to condemn them and lay down a rule of “no hitting, never” was not correct. Here I was studying all sorts of violent things because I know that sometimes violence is the answer, and now I’m telling my children never to use violence? That didn’t jive, and I had to correct myself.
I teach my children differently now. I teach my children that yes, sometimes violence is the answer, but you must know when that is. If your sibling took your toy or is being annoying, violence is not an appropriate response. If someone is attempting to harm you, abduct you, your sibling, your friends, your Mother… then yes, violence can be an answer. I do what I can to teach my children the proper contexts, to know how to respond in these contexts. I wish my children to live peaceful lives, and while I know the world has mostly good people, there are enough bad people out there that we have to take care and be prepared.
Some months back I posted about guns and church and reconciling Christian doctrine against violent activity. It doesn’t preach it, it doesn’t desire it, but even it acknowledges that sometimes yes, violence is the answer.
It’s not pretty to think about, and it’s far from politically correct. But where do you choose to live? In fantasy or reality?
The kid might grow older but that doesn’t mean the kid has to grow up. 🙂
I remember as a young boy flipping through the JC Penny master catalogs. I don’t know how many pages were in there, but it was a thick catalog; endless pages holding everything you could think of and more about almost any category one could shop for. It was so cool to flip through all the pages with toys, making your list for Santa. Just dreaming about all that could be had. Then you get a little older and discover the lingerie ads, and a different sort of dreaming goes on. 😉
We get older, our tastes change again. Today I received in the mail my Brownells #62 master catalog. And the dreaming shall commence all over again.
But these days I wonder if catalogs are worth all the cost and expense. I’ll never actually order out of the catalog. It’s so much easier to go to a website to search and find things, then to make the purchase via their website. So what purpose does the printed catalog really serve, and could the company be better served by not incurring the costs of making and printing and distributing the catalog and passing along those cost savings to the customers by way of lower prices? They know their business better than I, so I suppose as long as they’re seeing a good return on their investment it’s worthwhile to do.
Besides, it is tough to beat the tactile feeling of sitting on the floor, flipping through pages, and dreaming. 🙂
Today we had to travel across town to visit the kids’ dentist. Oldest is going to be getting braces, and this was the consultation… for my cash-ectomy. 😉 It’s going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt him, but thankfully his braces will be “routine” and not any major ordeal. The big hope is improvements in well… attitude and long-term outlooks on the part of Oldest. As you can guess, he’s not thrilled about getting braces, but it’s one of those teenager rites-of-passage so here we are. How long? Dentist said 18-24 months, but ultimately it depends how his body responds to the treatment. Wife did braces a couple years ago and she was over the top with her oral hygiene during the process. As a result, she was able to get hers off a lot sooner because her mouth was in fantastic shape. Oldest has observed this and at least mentally has acknowledged that the ordeal will end sooner if he takes good care of things. Of course, that will still require over a year of dedicated every day work on his part. So, we’ll see what it leads to for him in terms of longer-term goal accomplishment and such. That is, Dad looks at this not just as a way to improve Oldest’s smile, but also a lot of other things for him too. 🙂
But that’s not what this is about. This is about my new iPhone!
I knew I’d use this thing more for data than phone. That I can be just about anywhere and do things I need to do is awesome. I was working on my news feeds while in the waiting room. I’m rather behind on things due to the way the weekend was, so it was great to be able to catch up and not be further behind. I use NetNewsWire for my RSS reading, and they have an iPhone app version of the same. Cool thing? If you sign up for their NewsGator service, it will keep all your subscriptions and read/unread information on their server. So I was reading things while on the road, but didn’t complete all the reading. Get home, get things synced, and I can pick up where I left off using my MacBook Pro and the desktop client. Very nice to have not only the ability to do what I want where I want, but to be able to keep various devices and mechanisms in sync. Cool!
I’m still adjusting to how the iPhone does things. I wish there was a more direct way to flip around between apps than to always have to click the Home button then re-navigate to the app. That is, some apps will launch other apps (e.g. NetNewsWire might let me view a page in Safari), then I can’t just easily switch back to NNW but I have to go back Home, refind NetNewsWire, then get into it. Granted the app doesn’t lose its state, which is nice, but it’s still one of those navigational annoyances.
One thing I really would like is a better way to access Facebook. The Facebook iPhone app is nice, but 1. doesn’t support landscape typing, 2. is really just an accessor for Facebook itself. To play games I found I have to use Safari, ensure I bypass the mobile login for Facebook, then work from there. It’s rather cumbersome, but at least I can toodle around on Facebook games if I want to while on the road. 🙂 Gotta mind the important things in life, right?
And yes… Wife has bigtime envy. I’m sure I’ll be getting her one soon. 🙂
A couple of good posts on modern day translations. What they say vs. what they mean.
First, tgace gives us the language of the street.
Then Marko gives us some political translations.
All fairly accurate. Certainly no “all your base are belong to us” sorts of problems here.
On Friday, Wife noticed new kitteh has worms. This morning was the first time we could get to our vet.
She got her checkup, shots, de-wormer, the whole treatment. She’s quite fine and healthy.
The big news?
She’s only about 9-10 weeks old. So much for our Internet armchair kitten aging technique. We’re about a month off.
Wow.
So she’s quite young, which changes things a little bit. Not much, but a little feeding and other care differences to do. Plus, it does mean that spaying will be further off (maybe late Fall, early Winter time), which is just fine… one less expense to deal with right now.
I’m a hard workin’ man, doin’ all that I can, tryin’ to make ends meet.
Just a makin’ my way through this jungle today, it’s gettin’ the best of me.But I know it’s gettin’ better, and a change is gonna come my way
Yes I know it’s gettin’ better, better every day, a-huh yeah.Been a changin’ the scene, if you know what I mean. Good things are comin’ my way.
Now I’m livin’ my life, and I’m doin’ it right. Sun shinin’ every day.I can feel it gettin’ better, and a change is gonna come my way.
Yes I feel it gettin’ better, better every day.— Tesla, “Gettin’ Better”
Yes, things are getting better around here. Past some days have been kinda shitty for me, but you accept the lemons life gives you and you make lemonade. There’s a Taoist notion that the way to be rid of a disease/sickness is to welcome it, be with it, and let it pass through you. Just roll with it, be like water.
Presenting sitting in my backyard, enjoying the fact I live in the city but the unique location of my house on the outskirts of the city makes it like I’m in the country… one of the local does came up to have an evening nosh… I’ve got my laptop with me, playing some Led Zeppelin via iTunes (let’s hear it for wireless networking), blogging, enjoying a Rocky Patel Vintage 1990, a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA,… life is good.
I’m not really a cigar smoker, but back in my college days me and 3 buddies from high school had a ritual. When we’d come back to home base during our respective college breaks, we’d gather and have a “stogie night”. I miss those guys… we’re in touch, but haven’t physically seen each other in years. Haven’t smoked cigars since then (I quit cigarettes many years ago and have zero desire for them; in fact, they sicken me to breathe/smell). But my buddy W is a cigar smoker and he introduced me to Rocky Patel’s. I tried one to see if I’d care for it or not, and lo.. I liked it. I don’t intend to make cigars a habit, but today I couldn’t help but go out and buy one to enjoy. Don’t know why… just felt right and I went with that emotion.
No real point to this post… just relishing that in the end, life is good. We have our hardships, we have our shit to deal with, but in the end, life is still good. In fact, to make it better, we have to sometimes just put the shit aside and forget about it… and find something to just enjoy and lose yourself in, even for a little bit. Gotta keep our sanity, gotta keep our balance.
And never take life too seriously. 😎
Actually… I have two random bits of grossness.
The other day when I came home from the indoor range, I put a tissue up my nose to clean things out. When I pull the tissue out, there’s black on the tissue. Eh? I do a bit more cleaning in and around both nostrils and find more black. I am not 100% sure what it is, but I can only deduce it’s from the indoor range… all the smoke, especially given the guy shooting the muzzleloader in the bay next to me. Who knows what else I inhaled. This is just another reason why indoor ranges aren’t the greatest thing… or that Red’s needs to massively improve ventilation. Rather gross, and unsettling as to what I took into my body.
The new kitty? She has the most god-awful farts, and has them rather frequently. Or at least, it seems the cause-effect is pick up kitty, get a nasty fart for your troubles.
Joy. 😕
I’ve been quieter than usual lately. Bunch of stuff came down at work… not necessarily bad, just has necessitated most of my attention.
Thankfully I have kali class tonight. That should be some welcome stress relief. 🙂
I’l resume shooting my mouth off as time permits… hopefully soon, as fires are coming under control.
Stuff From Hsoi 