Life

Guns and church

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Arkansas’s House just passed a bill approving concealed carry in church.

I applaud this. Texas’ concealed carry laws originally prohibited carry in church but the law changed to allow it (unless, like any place they post a valid 30.06 sign). 

Like I said before, having such laws only stop the law-abiding good guys. The law-breaking bad guys don’t care. The wolves will roam where they please, especially to places where it’s easy to pick off the sheep. Laws don’t erect magical force-fields to keep out the bad guys. 

From the article:

Rep. Steven Breedlove, D-Greenwood, a minister at the Valley View Church of Christ, said allowing concealed handguns won’t stop someone from opening fire inside a church.

“Ronald Reagan was completely surrounded by armed guards and he was still shot,” Breedlove said. “And that is why we must put our faith in God and not put our faith in something else … Let us keep the sanctity of churches and put our faith in God and not in guns.”

No, it won’t stop someone bent on crazy. John Hinckley Jr. was crazy. A minister should know that bad things can happen to good people and we can’t stop it all. And although a subject of much debate, it seems rather a Christian thing to defend yourself and others.

Self-defense may actually result in one of the greatest examples of human love. Christ Himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:14). When protecting one’s family or neighbor, a Christian is unselfishly risking his or her life for the sake of others.

Theologians J. P. Moreland and Norman Geisler say that “to permit murder when one could have prevented it is morally wrong. To allow a rape when one could have hindered it is an evil. To watch an act of cruelty to children without trying to intervene is morally inexcusable. In brief, not resisting evil is an evil of omission, and an evil of omission can be just as evil as an evil of commission. Any man who refuses to protect his wife and children against a violent intruder fails them morally.”

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.

So while allowing good people to possess useful tools wherever they man roam may not stop crazy, it can act as a deterrent and discourager, and at least give you a fighting chance. Yea, it even appears to be a moral obligation.

I agree. Do not put your faith in an inanimate object — a gun. But perhaps you can have faith that God might be guiding some to do His will, to be the sheepdogs helping The Shepherd guard his flock. Just ask Jeanna Assam.

 

Update: Robb chimes in with his take on the matter.

No fun

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I discover last night that my home server box (and old Mac) has something wrong with it. I have no idea how it happened, but I went to print something (the server has the printer hooked up to it and shares the printer across my home network), there was a printing problem, needed to log into the box to fix it… turn on the machine’s monitor and there’s all this bizarre stuff on screen.. no GUI, just tons of scrolled text, like a console (I do have verbose booting turned on).

Looked at the system.log and there’s all manner of problems listed in there. Very weird things. Daemon proceeses not running, already running and terminated. Tons of weird errors. Trying to log into the box from other machines on the network would hang. It was just a mess.

Tried an archive install this morning. Didn’t seem to resolve things. So now I’m doing a full nuke and pave and rebuilding of the machine.

*sigh*

Y’know, this is the first serious problem I’ve ever had with a Mac, that I can remember. And I’m at a loss to explain why this even happened and why it requires such drastic measures to resolve. I went searching online on the things I saw in the system log and I’m not the only one that’s experienced it, but unfortunately no resolve could be found other than others taking the same route of nuke and pave… not that that’s the solution, just that they too couldn’t find an answer so they figured to try a complete reinstall and it of course made the problem go away.

Ugh.

But hey, 1 major problem like this with one machine in all the years and with all the Macs I’ve owned. Not a bad track record. Still better than using Windows. 😉

 

Update: I did a complete nuke and pave of the boot volume back to Mac OS X 10.5.0, then just completed doing all the netborne updates to get her up to 10.5.6 and all the other updates. And while the machine appears to be working better now, I still see a raft of the following errors:

kernel ALF ALERT: sockwall_cntl_updaterules ctl_enqueuedata rts err 55 

Googling only turns up other people that are similiarly mystified. This error was in the system.log before I reinstalled, and is in there now, even after doing an erase install.

But again, the machine appears to be functioning correctly now. Many of the earlier problems were missing dylibs, other weird failures to load. And so it makes sense the reinstall corrected stuff. I’d still like to know about these errors tho.

Update 2: A buddy of mine pointed me to this page. I hadn’t seen that particular page, but I had seen some other things that were suggesting printer sharing might be the culprit. So since it was certainly the culprit for that guy I thought I’d try it on mine. Turned off printer sharing, reboot, no errors. Try again, still no errors. Turn printer sharing on, reboot, errors. Reboot again, errors. And tried that a few times to confirm and sure enough, printer sharing seems to be involved in the generation of this error.

I’m not sure if it’s truly an error or an issue to contend with, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to report to Apple. I have filed it as RADAR 6576309 with Apple.

Meantime, the machine appears to be working now, after the nuke & pave install. Things seem to be back to normal and functioning fine. In fact I have noticed that connecting to the machine via AFP from other machines is a bit faster now. I wouldn’t be surprised if because some of the old NetInfo-based SharePoints stuff was blown away (and seems to be not needed now) if that helped things a bit.

Update 3: (4/28/09). Apple DTS just replied to my RADAR report with a brief reply:

ALF ALERT: sockwall_cntl_updaterules ctl_enqueuedata rts err 55 is harmless, you should ignore it.

Well, there we go.

Report To State

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

This morning is the Texas Boy Scouts annual Report To State Parade. Every year during February (the month of Scouting’s birth in the United States), Scouts from all around Texas converge on the state capitol.

For one day, downtown Austin becomes a sea of Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Venturers and Sea Scouts from all over Texas marching down Congress Avenue to the Capitol. From there, special Scout delegates from each council in the state go to the floor of the House of Representatives and report to member of the state government about Scouting activities from the past year, and plans for the future. The Capitol Area Council’s organization and execution of this program has become the standard for other councils across the country. It is a unique opportunity for the Scouts that take part.

I’ve done this numerous times in the past when my older son was a Scout, and now I’m doing it again with my younger son as a Scout. While the morning is long and boring because you do a lot of waiting for your turn to walk, it’s really cool to see Scouts from all around the state, their floats, where they’re from. It’s actually pretty neat. It’s also cool to watch the kids, because now they get to be in a parade, and that’s pretty neat for them. Weather should be nice too. Of course, I am going on about 4 hours of sleep….

 

Update: Back from the parade. Good turnout. Was a lot of fun. As an unexpected bit of fun, Austin Chief of Police, Art Acevedo happened to be by our float while we were waiting to go. He hopped into the trailer with the boys and had a little fun with my son. Unfortunately I cannot figure out how to get WordPress to embed this video, so you’ll just have to click here in order to see it.

Tesla – Feb. 6, 2009, La Zona Rosa, Austin, TX

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I just returned from seeing Tesla play at La Zona Rosa in Austin, Texas. The show was good. Shorter than I expected (only one opening band, which I didn’t pay much attention to), but still a good show. Very straightforward, not much banter between songs, just music music music. I can’t put my finger on it, but I didn’t enjoy the show as much as the last one. Don’t get me wrong, this was a good show, but it felt like the last show/tour was just a lot of fun for the guys playing cover tunes and jamming. This show felt like “work”, and that’s understandable given they have a new album to promote (Forever More), and promote they did – they played 6 songs off the new album. The vibe just felt different, not bad, just different. Still, the show was good, glad I went.

Here’s a setlist:

  1. Forever More
  2. I Wanna Live
  3. Modern Day Cowboy
  4. Song & Emotion
  5. Breakin’ Free
  6. Hang Tough
  7. Heaven’s Trail (No Way Out)
  8. So What!
  9. One Day At A Time
  10. Fallin’ Apart
  11. Acoustic Guitar Duel
  12. Love Song
  13. Try So Hard
  14. What You Give
  15. Signs
  16. Little Suzi
  17. Electric Guitar Duel (Encore)
  18. Cummin’ Atcha Live (Encore)

And remember…. it’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you give.

 

Updated: Check it out. Someone made a high-quality video of the entire show and posted it to YouTube.

It looks like the person taking the video was standing at the “back” of the room, behind where the sound and light boards were. I was watching the entire show from just in front of the boards, since they had a bit of a wall/ledge in front of them that made it nice to lean and hang on. Looking at the user icon for teslajunkie’s YouTube channel, I remember seeing her back there. Didn’t know she was taping the show tho. Awesome!

Concert memories

/ hsoi

Music has always been a part of my life, be it performing it or listening to it. I’ve played piano, violin, trumpet, french horn, guitar, a little bit of bass and drums. I’ve played in rock bands; played my acoustic guitar on the street in Denton, TX; various jam sessions; was in “band” from 5th grade through 8th with trumpet, and 11th and 12th I played french horn; I was drum major in marching band my senior year. I’ve actually had thoughts about picking up the french horn again — of all the instruments I played it was probably the most expressive and versatile. I recall in high school playing in a woodwind quintet, and that was a lot of fun… playing with 4 gorgeous girls didn’t hurt either. 🙂

Then there’s all the concerts I’ve been to. I can’t remember them all, but I’ve seen Mötley Crüe a number of times, White Zombie, Pantera, Wrathchild America, Cyclone Temple, Last Crack, Kix, Sepultura, Sacred Reich, Sick of it All, Napalm Death, Corrosion of Conformity, Down, Crowbar, Alabama Thunderpussy, Suplecs, Warrant, Judas Priest, Heaven & Hell, Motörhead, Testament, Stu Hamm, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci, White Trash, Lucy Brown, Kage, Dave Matthews Band (before they were signed), Trans-Siberian Orchestra, The Coup De Grace, Scorpions, Trixter, Great White, Child’s Play, Trouble, G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band, Aerosmith, 4 Non Blondes, Collective Soul, and I know there’s been many many more. 

So tonight I’m going to see Tesla in concert. I saw them the last time they came through Austin about a year and a half ago and they were awesome. They are not a washed up ’80s band trying to reclaim their former glory. They still make albums, they still tour, and they seem to grok the whole Internet thing and know how to work with it instead of fighting against it. I’m happy to support them.

Thing is, all day long I’ve been excited about going to the show and I found myself reverting back to my old high school concert-going habits. Things like how you have to listen to the band all day long. Of course when you’re driving to the show, you have to have their music cranked. What clothing am I going to wear? Why my Tesla t-shirt of course, and jeans. I’ve been thinking about how much cash I need to bring so I can buy a t-shirt. As the story goes: “An old hesher once told me that you gotta get the best shirt because they only come around once.” 😀   And then of course, you MUST wear the shirt to school the next day to prove to everything that you were there.

Ever hear of Heavy Metal Parking Lot?

I grew up in the Washington D.C. area, and I was just at that right age when this documentary was made. It brings back so many memories. So many shows seen at The Capital Centre. Man, that was a time.

The filmmaker, Jeff Krulik, used to have all of his movies available for free on his website, but no longer. You can buy the DVD of HMPL (which I have done, and it’s pretty funny to see some of the people today, especially Zebraman), and I managed to find the full video here, tho who knows how long it’ll remain.

Rock on!

No office, not bad

/ hsoi

Being a software engineer I’m fortunate that my job can be performed anywhere in the world… so long as I’ve got a computer and an Internet connection. As a result, I’m happy to work from home and telecommute full time.

While there certainly are disadvantages to not being in the office, there are also advantages. IM’ing with an office-bound co-worker this morning he tells me about 1. some new computer that another engineering group brought into the office for testing something (dunno what, but apparently the fans are wicked loud), 2. someone had a potpourri thing in the office yesterday and it stunk the place up so bad they had to ask her to remove it. Ah, the joys of the cube farm. The sounds I get are those of my wife and kids working and playing, and the smells of my wife’s cooking. This is quite the advantage. 🙂

This weekend

/ hsoi

The weekend’s not yet here but already I can’t not think about it.

Tomorrow night going to see Tesla in concert. I’ve seen them live before and it was excellent. They’ve got talent and ability, thus why they’ve always kept going and didn’t die off after the ’80s were over. I think their “Into The Now” album (2004) is one of their best. Just a damn good rock band.

Then I get home from the concert, get a couple hours of sleep, and then it’s off to the Boy Scouts of America Texas Report To State Parade. My younger son is a Tiger Cub and I’m a Den Leader (again), so we get to head downtown and walk down Congress Avenue with thousands of other Scouts from around the state. It’s actually really neat to see Scouts from all over, and the kids always enjoy being in a parade as well as seeing all the floats and other Scouts. 

And I’m sure I’ll have a honey-do list to tend to afterwards, and a nap. 😉

Should be a fun weekend.