Life

Sunday ride

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

Early Sunday mornings are my favorite time for motorcycle riding. The roads are about as dead as you’ll see during the week, so there’s little pressure and little noise. It’s a great time to ride.

This morning the weather was great. Cool, breezy, fairly cloudy. Just had some rain so the roads are fairly clean. And with the rain we’ve been getting lately, everything is green. Wildflowers in bloom up and down the roadsides, lush green grass. It’s just a great time to cruise and enjoy what’s around you; be thankful for it too.

I prefer to ride alone as riding is my therapy, my escape, my time to decompress and unclutter my head. On Sunday mornings, it’s my personal time for commune with the greater thing(s) out there. When you roll through and experience the sights, the sounds, the smells of the world around you, you get reflective… you get thankful… you count your blessings and perhaps discover a few you didn’t realize you had. I haven’t been able to ride much latey and it reflects in the level of stress I’ve been feeling. While today’s ride was short, it was better than nothing and certainly welcome.

To boot, I stopped by Cabelas, picked up a couple things including .22 LR ammo (finally, someone has it back in stock!). I picked up 5 bricks — that’s over 2500 rounds, and I guess means I have an instant arsenal now, right? For anyone who wonders why someone would need that much ammo, well… come shooting with me sometime, you can use the Buck Mark, and you’ll see how quickly one runs through it. You might even have fun too, but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. 🙂

Play date!

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

I actually dislike the term “play date”, but figure it’s amusing for a title.

TXGunGeek organized a play day. It was him, some of his friends, commenter Chimera was there, doc was there (it was a pleasure to meet you!), Barbie no-showed on us. But to me, the coolest part was TXGunGeek said it was cool if I brought my kids so Daughter came out with me.

Everyone got unpacked and there was just a smorgasbord of guns on the table. Everyone checking everyone else’s gear out, “Hey can I try that?” “Only if I can try that!”. It was quite cool. But, allow me to focus on My Little Girl for a bit, since that was the highlight of my day. 🙂

The main thing she was looking forward to was shooting the Buck Mark. A few days ago at house we did a little dry fire. She’s never fired a handgun before so we went over things like grip and stance, how the Buck Mark operates, etc..  She already knows about things like sight picture and trigger control, but we touched on those again as well. So once we got to the range and we could go hot, we shot steel. At the range there’s a nice set of steel targets, from 6″ and 8″ circles to larger rectangles and pepper poppers. Daughter had a blast. She liked shooting the Buck Mark. She liked the sound of lead hitting steel. She was doing really well. She would shoot a magazine then rest, since the gun would be heavy held out at arms length. As we went along I refined her trigger control so she would ride the trigger and properly reset it. Then working on regaining sight picture and shooting again as soon as she regained the sight picture. I think she really enjoyed that, being able to shoot a bit faster that she was before. I can’t disagree… there’s something satisfying about shooting fast and hearing all that “ping” on the steel.

Daughter also got to shoot a few other things. Chimera had a Henry lever-action .22, which Daughter really got a kick out of. I think she liked the lever-action. TXGunGeek had a .22 conversion kit for his AR and while the rifle was very heavy (you can see my right hand supporting the front), Daughter liked to shoot it.

Daughter was nothing but big smiles all morning long. She was shooting well, got to try some new (to her) and different guns. I’m a proud Daddy. 🙂

As for me, again I gotta say how much I like that Buck Mark. It is so much fun to shoot. 

The big thing of the day was a course TXGunGeek set up. Started off with a long gun (whatever you wanted to shoot, Chimera even tried it with his Henry lever-action), engage cardboard, shoot some clay pigeons, more cardboard, move, transition to side-arm, steel, cardboard, move, more cardboard, various distances, precise shooting. A fun little course.

Here I am, engaging the clays and missing because I was figuring out exactly how much holdover I needed:

And here I am after the transition to the XD.

We wrapped up just as it started to rain on us. Good timing. The weather was very nice: partly cloudy, a cool breeze, moderate temps. Just a great day for shooting.

I asked Daughter what she enjoyed: the Buck Mark. 🙂  I asked her what she learned: how to shoot a handgun, and a bit more about things like sight picture and trigger control.

I asked myself what I learned: it reinforced my need to make an effort to back off on speed and jack up accuracy. Not so slow that it’s akin to bullseye shooting, but well…. after I got home I was thinking that next time I’m shooting the Buck Mark on the steel range the thing to have in my head is “all hits”, that all 10 rounds in the magazine must go “ping”. That will require slowing down a bit, being 100% sure of sight picture before firing, keeping my eyes glued to that front sight.  I also learned I need to spend more time with my AR (and that I want an Aimpoint). What did I enjoy? Having a great time with my Daugther, bonding, teaching her things, creating fond memories. That was my highlight. 🙂

I want to thank TXGunGeek for setting this up and inviting me out to it, and for allowing my daughter to come along as well. Thanx to Chimera for letting us shoot his Henry (man, I want one of those now!). Doc, it was great to meet you! Everyone else, it was good to meet you too and I’m sure we’ll see each other again.

A good day. Now, off to clean some guns.

Updated: Gotta brag on my little girl a bit more. In the classroom at the range there’s a subtle but intentional thing done. I don’t want to say what it is because it’s better when students discover it on their own. It took me a few visits before I noticed it, then it was explained to me. This was daugther’s first time in the classroom and she noticed it immediately. I was tickled. 🙂

Updated 2: TXGunGeek has his write-up on the day.

Updated 3: Docbot finally wrote up!

Growing old together

/ hsoi

Blogging’s been light the past couple days. My buddy W got married tonight. I was one of his groomsmen and was honored to be (thus my minimal blogging, as I’ve been off doing wedding stuff). He’s a great guy, someone I’m fortunate to be able to call a friend. He’s found himself a wonderful woman in A, and seeing the two of them together… they are great for each other. I know my word choice is pretty lame here, but the simple fact is I just can’t express it. Watching them exchanging their vows, heck, every time I’m just around them… you can feel something great between them.

I see how they treat each other. I see how they care for each other. The tenderness, the consideration, the way they light up. It’s not just little silly things either. It’s bigger things, things that matter more for a relationship to have long-term success. I do believe they’ve got “it”.  I’ve only been married 13 years (1st and only marriage), so I still don’t know a lot. But I know what I like about my marriage and what helps to make it last:

My wife is someone I want to grow old with, and I’m someone she wants to grow old with.

If you have that, in so many ways you have an important bit of what it takes to succeed. I shared this, my wish for you both, at the reception this evening. It comes from my heart. I look forward to watching you guys growing old together. 🙂

Slacking, sorta

/ hsoi

The past couple weeks have been… full? distracting? having other things taking priority? been what they’ve been is all I can say. Some of it documented here, some not. As a result tho, I haven’t been at the dojang as much as I’ve wanted to be. So to my Kuk Sool folk reading this, sorry I haven’t been there… but it’s not from lack of want. 🙂  I did sign up for seminar tho. Dan bong! Looking forward to it.

Thing is, a while ago I made a commitment to practice martial arts every day. Doesn’t matter what it is, just as long as it’s something and done every day. It could be going to the dojang. It could be going to the garage and working on the heavy bag. It could be going on the yard and doing forms. It could be dry fire. It could be just draw practice. It might just be working out some techniques in my head, thinking through self-defense scenarios. Mentally going through all my Kuk Sool curriculum. Freeform development of mixed concepts (e.g. empty hand transition to handguns). Whatever. Doesn’t always have to be intensely physical, could be mental, could be just meditating on some concepts. So long as every day I do something. Going to the dojang is actually a fair part of that, but not going is really bugging me…. such is just life right now. Ebb and flow.

Convey to the person what you want them to do

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I previously wrote an article on how “mindset is everything” and in there discuss the importance of conveying to the person what you want them to do. If you haven’t read that article, you should read it before continuing with this article. It’s brief, go read it. I’ll be here when you’re done and return. 🙂

An interesting report from Force Science News. The relevance here is to the issuance of commands, as I mention in my “mindset is everything” article, to convey to the person what you want them to do. The article discusses a study of how police give commands under stress and how the type of command affects compliance. It mentions two sorts of commands: alpha, and beta. 

“Alpha commands,” Lewinski explains, “are simple, direct and explicit, so that even someone in a chemically or emotionally induced fog is likely to understand them.” Examples: “Take your hands out of your pocket,” “Stop talking,” “Quit resisting,” “Don’t leave your vehicle.”

… “[Beta commands] are indirect or imprecise orders that require interpretation by the suspect, based on his or her inference of what the officer intends,” Lewinski says. Examples: “Move,” “Give it up,” “Don’t be stupid,” “Stop screwing around,” “Knock it off,” “Don’t make me kill you.”

In other words, officers in day-to-day interactions generally gave very clear commands about what they wanted, and for the most part they gained compliance. But when they felt themselves threatened, this direct precision tended to be abandoned quickly. While they may have started out issuing alpha commands, in the face of resistance and personal danger they overwhelmingly transitioned to vaguer, less direct beta commands and, in general, gained markedly less compliance.

…

Based on his work with autistic children and others who show resistance in classrooms, he knows that “beta commands are very ineffective and inefficient. They leave people guessing.” When teachers switch from beta to alpha commands, they experience greater compliance even from mentally and emotionally disabled students, Houlihan says. “With the change, you almost immediately see better teachers and better kids.”

He cites an incident from the law enforcement studies in which an officer was in a stand-off with a suspect who was gripping a knife. “The officer told him 5 times, ‘Don’t make me kill you’ before he finally did shoot the suspect. A terrible command! He might have thought he was conveying an order to put down the knife, but that’s not what he said. It was left up to the suspect to interpret what the officer meant and what action was expected. In effect, the suspect was put in the position of having to control the officer’s behavior.

It doesn’t matter the context: police work, self-defense, dealing with your kids, ordering food at a restaurant, talking with your boss or subordinates, whatever. If you wish to increase the level of success regarding compliance with your requests, clearly convey to the person what you want them to do.

The server is down

/ hsoi

So… the company email server goes down. No problem. These things happen.

The server comes back up. All the backlogged email comes gushing through.

What’s one of the first emails that we receive?

An email telling us that the email server is down.

*sigh*

Reminds me of The Website Is Down, sales guy vs. web dude. NFSW, but damn hilarious.

Being a more light-hearted parent

/ hsoi

There’s a lot about the HuffPo that doesn’t jive with me, but this article by Gretchen Rubin about 10 ways to be a more light-hearted parent is a pretty spot-on piece.

While I understand and agree with the point of #6, I would say it’s more important to phrase things in terms of what you want them to do. Sometimes negative phrasing might be the right way to phrase it. Still, Ms. Rubin’s point is generally solid. You can read this for further elaboration on what I mean.

Still, a pretty decent list.