Me

Random grossness

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Actually… I have two random bits of grossness.

Random gross #1

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.

Random gross #2

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. 😕

Quiet…

/ hsoi

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.

A Brief Analysis of Heaven Six

/ hsoi

Gun folk might know Michael Janich from his co-hosting of The Best Defense TV show. He’s also an accomplished martial artist with a background in escrima. Here’s a video with him explaining “Heaven Six”, a foundational drill in Filipino martial arts such as escrima, arnis, and kali.

What I like about this video is it shows how the basic “Heaven Six” movement goes beyond the sticks. Janich demonstrates a lot of empty hand application, from strikes, to blocks, to joint locks. Certainly he’s just touching the surface, but it does point out all that you can do with just that simple movement.

I haven’t regretted my decision to study kali. This sort of power in simplicity is awesome.

Unexpected support

/ hsoi

Got a call from my Mom this evening. Told her how I had just finished eating dinner. What was for dinner? Why pork ribs. But not just any pork ribs, but pork ribs I obtained myself! BTW, they were damn good… dry rub of my own creation, mopped in apple cider vinegar, let it sit for about a hour, then into the smoker at about 300-325º for 90 minutes or so, oak wood for smoke. Damn fine. But I digress.

I just said that I had ribs from the pig I shot on my hunt, and Mom didn’t flinch. You see, Mom isn’t exactly thrilled with my love of firearms… safety factor, guns in the home leads to kids being hurt, and all those other things that is understandable to think but data demonstrates otherwise. But Mom actually thought it was pretty cool. I was surprised, but welcomed her support.

After hanging up with Mom, I opted to call Dad just to say hello. Told him the same. Dad’s a little more on the gun-friendly side of things. Told him about the night hunt and the deer lease. He thought that was all pretty cool, and inquired if I was going to take the kids hunting. I said Oldest and Daughter, yes, but Youngest hasn’t shown much interest in guns period (no need to push it). Dad had to get going to dinner with some friends, but it was still a good chat.

It was welcoming to hear such support from my folks. Not that they’re unsupportive of me, but like in Mom’s case she wasn’t too hot on the guns so this was a surprise. And then for Dad to ensure I take the kids out was cool. See, Dad never took me hunting. I did have my first actual firearms experience with him (took me to shoot skeet once), but not a whole lot. So, all of these things were just welcome things to my ears. 🙂

Of course, what it means to me now is I need to have a lot of game in the freezer for when they come to visit. Gotta feed the folks well. 🙂

Range time

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I needed to go to the gun range this morning to take care of some chores. This wasn’t a practice session, this was taking care of some business. So, I headed to the local indoor range and took care of my two tasks.

Zero the 10/22

I will be needing a .22 rifle this coming weekend, so I wanted to make sure my Ruger 10/22 was in working order. The scope had come loose last time it was being used, so I had tightened things down and wanted to ensure it was zeroed. It wasn’t too far off, just needed a little tweaking, but it’s back to being zeroed at 25 yards and I’m happy. Should run just fine this coming weekend.

I haven’t shot the 10/22 in a while, and I forgot how nice it is to shoot. Not so much the gun itself, but just shooting a little .22 rimfire for accuracy. I could certainly see making myself a really customized up target rig with a Ruger 10/22 as the base, and just sitting out in the country somewhere on a nice day, drinking iced tea, and punching holes in paper. I’ve experienced this before when shooting this gun… there’s something somewhat Zen about the experience.

Also since I hadn’t shot it in a while, now shooting it I realized the truths about that trigger. It’s not a bad trigger, it’s just a lot heavier than I remember. I guess I’ve been spoiled by lighter triggers lately (the snub notwithstanding).

Anyway, this was a simple enough task, then I got down to what I really wanted to do….

Break in the Snub

Ever since I got my S&W 442 a little over a week ago I’ve been itching to break it in. Finally got that chance, but my time was cut short. Read on.

I started out just wanting to throw some lead. Just get some rounds through it to break it in under fire (I’ve already been doing a lot of dry fire to start the break-in process), get the feel for it in my hands. Went through a box of Magtech .38 Special 158 grain lead round nose to start.

I don’t like the small grip. I don’t like how my pinky hangs off the bottom. Feels weird, plus it takes away recoil control. I knew this going in. However, I don’t want to give up the smaller grip and thus concealability. Just grip harder with both hands. Having that “crush grip” worked fine and I was able to control the little gun just fine. I’m still going to look for grips that might be just a hair longer, but I’m not going to really sweat it too much.

Under actual fire, I realized that I was using the distal joint of my index finger…makes sense with the heavier trigger pull. Interestingly, everything worked just fine. My eyes were trained on the front sight, and even with all the grip and trigger differences, I was still being combat accurate enough. But again, I think the crush grip is what makes the difference here.

I’d like to put some red paint or something on the front sight to make it a bit more visible.

I then started to go through some defensive ammo. As I wrote about here, I don’t have the ability to do deeper testing of the rounds, like gel or wetpack, chronographs, and the like. But, most of that information is out there if you look for it. What I’m looking at is how well it works in my gun and how it performed for me. Today I was able to try out: the Federal Nyclad, the Buffalo Bore, and the Cor®Bon DPX.

The Federal Nyclad felt about the same as the Magtech, which stands to reason as they’re both standard pressure rounds. Accuracy was fine, and again since it was a standard pressure round was certainly the most controllable round to shoot. I was surprised at how much muzzle flash there was. It may just be the nature of the snub-nose beast, but I was still taken-aback by the amount of flash I saw. And note, this was at an indoor range… it’s not dark, but it’s not bright and sunny either.

The Buffalo Bore by contrast didn’t have as much noticeable muzzle flash, but did produce a lot of smoke. I will say that their claim of being “non+P” is a lie. 😉  I mean, this is Buffalo Bore, I expected it to be hot, but I figured if they were saying “non+P” that it might be in line with that. I can say that, at least in terms of the felt recoil, it kicked hard and was the hardest recoil of the bunch. At one point I looked at my right hand and noticed I was bleeding in the web of my hand between the thumb and index finger… where your hand wraps around the back of the gun. It wasn’t more than just the skin being broken, but it bled a lot and eventually is what caused me to cut my range time short.

The Cor®Bon recoiled more than the Nyclad, but less than the Buffalo Bore, and I’d say closer to the Buffalo Bore than the Nyclad, since 1. the DPX is a +P round, and 2. this is CorBon and they’re always hot loads. It too had some noticeable muzzle flash.

Anyway, that’s all I was able to manage, due to the aforementioned wound. I was there to break in the gun and instead it broke me. 😉  I did manage to put a few rounds of Remington UMC 130 grain FMJ downrange just for some additional comparison. I’ve always thought UMC had the most muzzle flash of any ammo I’ve seen (looks kinda cool at night), and I’d say that the other muzzle flashes I saw today were on par with that tho the UMC was likely the brightest of all.

They all shot well enough. All ran in the gun. All were accurate enough. I do think the Nyclads were the most controllable and the Buffalo Bore the least, but the spread wasn’t that wide. The key was shooting enough to get familiar with the load and the gun so you know what you’re up against and how your tool will behave. Crush grip is key.

So what will I pick for now? Well, for now I’ll probably go with the Buffalo Bore. I actually don’t like how hot it is and how much it bites, but these will be used in a defensive situation, not a normal range ammo. Furthermore, because they’re so hot I don’t know how the S&W 442 would appreciate a steady diet of them. But for now until I get the ammo I really want, when I take the 442 out I’ll load it with the Buffalo Bore, but only because of two things:

1. Lowest perceived muzzle flash

2. it’s the only semi-wadcutter that I have

#2 is the bigger reason. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m finding more and more support that the “lead semi-wadcutter hollow point” (LSWCHP) is really the load that I want to use for self-defense. It provides penetration above all, but has expanding capabilities which helps to maximize desired impact and minimize risks of undesired (collateral) damage. It’s got a proven track record, and I don’t really have to worry about potential issues such as if the bullet will expand or not, if say I was in a contact shot situation, going through clothing, or other such matters. Again, I am not providing any sort of true scientific review or study here… this is just me in my informal reading, researching, Googling, talking with folks whose knowledge and opinion I trust. I’d really like to get those Remington R38S12 and carry those. I looked on the shelves at the range, but alas they didn’t have any. I Google to find someone online selling them, nothing. 😦  So, I shall just keep looking.

Other Range Observations

The range was rather busy for an early Sunday morning. The guy in the bay next to me was shooting a muzzleloader. I was surprised how quiet it was in comparison to some of the other cannons going off around me. It was fun when he’d shoot tho… all this smoke would drift across my bay. Kinda neat.

Lots of kids there. That’s not something I usually see when I go there, but lots of parents had brought their kids out. A father-daughter took the bay next to me after Mr. Muzzleloader left. She was shooting a bunch of lever-action rifles. I saw some kids shooting a Buckmark with Mom. Various other things. It was nice to see families doing things together.

I do not like shooting indoors, but when there’s a chore to do and it needs to be done quickly, it’s about the only option I have as the outdoor ranges are a bit of a drive.

But hey, I got to go and take care of some business. Can’t complain. 🙂

New Kitteh

/ hsoi

How did this happen?

We now have a new cat in the house. Well, kitten.

If I remember the story correctly, my in-laws were driving and saw this little kitten lying on the road. They stopped to check it out (they rescue many animals; seems to have become an informal hobby), thinking it was dead. Turns out, it was only stunned (pining for the fjords no doubt), but was covered in fire ants and was probably going to die. They took it to the vet, got her checked out, shots, all that. Kitty seems to be OK. They were going to give her away, and being as small and young as she is (we estimate 2-3 months old) I know there’d be no problem with that because the cute is strong with this one.

And as a result…. we have a new cat.

We get to the in-laws yesterday and get told about the kitten (they kept it in the bathroom because some of the dogs would probably play too rough). Kids go to visit and of course, instant love and cries of “Oh Dad, can we keep it?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

So what do kids do when Dad denies them? Turn to Mom.

Wife sees kitty. Falls in love.

“Honey, please?”

“N…..” *begrudging groan* “Fine.”

Later Wife tells me she was having a talk with Daughter. “Mom, I know why Dad said we could have the cat. Because he can’t say no to you.” 🙂 Damnit… my secret is out.

I said we could bring home kitty on one condition: trial period. We have two other cats, which I shall refer to as Gordita and Twitchy. Gordita and Twitchy are very well bonded to each other. I wasn’t sure how a 3rd wheel would work into this, especially a little kitten that doesn’t know its place (yet). Furthermore, Gordita may be a little runty butterball, but I’ve never seen a cat that fights with such intensity or has such lightly quick reflexes and awareness — she’s amazing. I wasn’t sure if she might scrap, and if so if kitten might be honestly harmed. Twitchy is the wild card. She’s nicknamed Twitchy for a reason. I wasn’t sure if she might smack kitten around, or if Twitchy might go and hide under the bed never to be seen again… that’s not good either. So, I told Wife and kids that keeping the kitten required a trial period just in case there were integration issues. Honestly, I didn’t expect any real issues, but better safe than sorry.

So we get kitten home and start the integration. Little kitten is first introduced to the litter box (vital!). We kept her shut in the laundry room for a bit while we unpacked and said Hi to the other cats. Then we let kitten out and she started to meow. Immediately other 2 cats come slinking down the stairs in search of this new meow. Much curiosity ensues. Good thing is kitten isn’t totally inept and is old enough to scrap. There’s lot of sniffing, poking at each other, and kitten knows how to turn sideways and make herself big. But she also seems to know she’s a little thing by comparison.

Gordita follows her around trying to watch every moment. Twitchy was a little wary and freaked at first, but eventually just watched from a distance. Eventually, Gordita lost interest and Twitchy got to a point where as long as kitten didn’t invade personal space, she’d be fine else get a hiss, growl, and perhaps a smack. And that’s about where things are as of this morning. Kitten is running around learning where things are and playing with anything she finds on the floor. Oh, and the strange kitten she saw staring back at her from the reflection in the dishwasher… that one will be dealt with later. 😉  Other 2 cats are just going about their business, watching kitten, ignoring kitten, ensuring kitten stays out of their personal space.

I think we’re going to be keeping her. *sigh*

Oh, and Oldest named her. He said the first thing that came into his head and the other two kids liked it, so, it’s official.

Ritz Bitz

Ritzy for short.

🙂

TomTom – the aftermath

/ hsoi

So the TomTom finally got unpacked and set up, and we set off using it. Wife’s Granddaddy’s funeral was yesterday up in middle of nowhere Texas. It’s a joke to estimate how small a town is by the traffic control devices. Does it have a stop light? if so, how many? No stop light? Does it have just a flashing red or yellow light at some “major” intersection? How about a Stop sign? or maybe just a Yield sign? Or no signs at all… where everyone in town knows each other so you can just wave each other by?  Well, this town was so small I don’t think there were any traffic devices as you went down “main street”. Yeah, that small. So, since it was way up in north Texas and I had never been there before, might as well try out this navigation device and see what happens.

First, the geek part of me just got a silly giggle out of it. It’s just a new toy and it’s fun to play with. When we first left the house and I programmed in the way to get to my in-laws (first stop), I was totally a kid playing around. I’d play with the points of interest on the map. I got a kick out of how it could estimate your speed and how it would know the speed limit for the road you were on and then set off an alarm if you drove too fast (Wife was driving, so it was funny once the kids understood what the beeping was, how they would prod Mom about driving too fast). 🙂  I also had it set off an alarm when we’d pass schools. Wow, didn’t realize how many schools there were; everywhere we went.

I stuck the TomTom on the windshield so everyone could see it. I didn’t like how the speaker was so quiet. It’s loud enough if everything else is silent, but once you account for road noise, maybe a little bit of music playing, it’s tough to hear. I think a really geeky thing would be integrating it with the car stereo.

I was impressed with the maps being as complete as they were, tho they didn’t give me directions to my in-law’s house… just up to their main road. They live in the country, and while the maps knew about all the roads no problem, they couldn’t get the house number. Oh well.

Since we had it on a female voice, we kept personifying the device. Eventually Wife dubbed the device my new girlfriend, because she kept nagging “turn left, turn left, turn left”. 🙂

While I didn’t always find the device necessary to help us get around, what became the most useful part was the estimates. It could tell us how many more miles to go, how much time was remaining. This was the most useful part because it was a very long day of driving and inevitably you got the “how much longer?” questions from the kids. While it’s not a problem to estimate and figure it out yourself, being able to just glance at the screen and give an answer was very useful.

The device is nifty, and I do think on longer trips we’ll certainly bring it along as there’s no harm in doing so. Based off the one trip I don’t see massive amounts of gain in having such a device, so I am happy this was a gift and not my own money spent. Frankly, I think there might be more gain in a combined device. For instance, this TomTom ONE 130 isn’t “real GPS” but rather satellite triangulation (I believe). You get something like an iPhone 3GS, that’ll be “real GPS”, apparently TomTom is going to be bringing their software to iPhone, then you have all the additional things like Internet access and phone to more fully get around and get information and well… that I think could be more useful, or rather, a more cost-effective solution than a single dedicated device.

By the end of the day, I had pretty much ignored the device (tho the “girlfriend” ribbing from Wife remained) 🙂  The novelty had worn off pretty quickly. But there’s a place for such a device. Again, it’ll get brought along on trips. The true utility of the device still to be determined.

TomTom

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’m embarassed to admit it, but I’ve had a TomTom ONE 130 for a while and haven’t used it. My older sister and brother-in-law gave it to me as a Christmas present, and it’s been sitting unopened in my office for ages.

Why?

Because I just haven’t had a calling for it. I like using maps. Maybe it’s the Boy Scout in me, but I’m cool with just using maps. Plus I enjoy having my own sense of direction. If I get lost, I’m usually able to navigate my way out just using some reasoning and sense of direction. I prefer to rely upon my wits instead of some device, because speaking as a software engineer well… let’s just say I know what bugs are. 😉  Wife and I have gotten along this far in life without a GPS. We ask directions, we use maps, we know how to navigate the land, and frankly if we do get lost we don’t mind driving around a bit more because hey… it’s just all part of life’s adventure. It’s fun!

I also think it’s because most of my driving is done locally, and I’m pretty familiar with Austin’s roads. I really don’t need some device to get me around. I think once or twice I’ve thought “gosh, if I had a GPS it would have been easier to find this, but I found it without the GPS so… eh.”

I do think GPS technology is really cool. When I think about taking long trips into unknown areas, I think a GPS could be useful. Since they have functions like finding landmarks, hotels, gas stations, ATM’s, and those sorts of things, that’s a great deal of usefulness, especially if you’re in unfamiliar waters. One reason I want an iPhone is just for this sort of thing. Heck, TomTom is supposedly bringing their software to the new iPhone. Being able to fully get around, maybe find a hotel from the road, call it to see if they still have rooms and at what price, and so on. All useful things.

So anyway, since we have a funeral to attend and it’s in some middle-of-nowhere town Texas, I figured this would be a useful time to pull out the TomTom and see what it could do. I’m currently getting it configured, updated with all the maps and such (man, that’s expensive), and getting it ready to go. Since I’m a software developer, I can’t help but look at it from a programmer’s perspective, and they did a lot of nice things. I do think the Mac desktop client app, TomTom HOME, is a bit clunky because they didn’t write it as a Mac-native app (is this Java?). Little things like that which look like popup buttons have behaviors like combo boxes. Little things like that. Oh, and crashing too.

We’ll see what comes of it. So far it seems pretty neat.

Updated: Well, that didn’t last long. I’ve been running the updaters on it, going through the forced upgrades and such. I think everything is good, but then I remove the device and get a flashing red X. Look it up on their website, I need to disable Spotlight on the device. OK, that was dealt with. I try again, still flashing red X. So I use their instructions to uninstall then reinstall. Do this a few times. Still nothing but a flashing red X. In fact, the downloads vary. One time I got all of the applications and voices and other files, but now all I get is the application. I wonder if the fact the HOME application crashed one time while updating things somehow hoarked stuff.

I don’t know… I’m fed up. I’ll try calling their tech support in the morning.

Updated 2: Got on with their tech support, and spoke with “Gary” who was friendly and helpful. Gave him my information, explained the problem. He said since I had tried all the usual things without much luck, that the next step was to reformat. So I did that. Went into Disk Utility.app and did a nuke and pave… reformatting the TomTom’s internal drive. Then hooked it back up to the HOME desktop software, it recognized things were empty, it downloaded and reinstalled the main application and USA/Canada map (which takes a long time over that USB cable; I wonder if it’s USB 1 because it’s mighty slow). After that, it ran a few more updates to get all the updates. I also had to manually reinstall the voices. But after that, all seemed better. In fact, it seemed better than it was originally as a lot of other options in the HOME software became available.

So, while I got off to an inauspicious start with the device, in the end it seems to be working well. Nuke and pave, is there anything it can’t cure? 🙂

Oh, I’ll make one suggestion for Mac users. As soon as I reformatted the TomTom’s drive, the first thing I did was disable Spotlight from searching on it by going to System Preferences, Spotlight, Privacy, and adding the “INTERNAL” drive to the list. But I also did a secret little thing. Launch the terminal and:

$ cd /Volumes/INTERNAL
$ touch .metadata_never_index

And that’s all. What this does is creates an invisible “secret” file named “.metadata_never_index” that the Spotlight mechanisms will look for as a hint to never index this volume. I opted to do this because for some reason at time I’ve noticed the Spotlight Privacy panel will forget volumes listed on it, so adding this secret file ought to be good insurance to keep Spotlight from ever touching the volume. Here’s hoping.

Then once all the Spotlight stuff was disabled, THEN I did all the updating and so on.

Now if I can put my geek/programmer hat on….

I must admit, I think the way the TomTom folks designed things is pretty slick. They let you drive everything from the desktop software and manage it all from there. While I think the GUI is very non-standard, it’s simple enough to understand and get by, and that’s what’s really important. I do think sometimes it could be better about flow; this goes for both the desktop software and the TomTom’s device software too. That is, sometimes you do something on a screen and want to keep working on that screen, but instead it exits you out to some earlier point in the process and you have to click click click click click to get back to where you were. For instance, in the HOME desktop software, there’s no way to just load up all my computer voices at once… I have to load one voice, then it exits me back to the main voices panel, click click, load next voice, etc..  Or on the device, I might want to change the alarm status for points of interest; it’s naturally a list, let me check and uncheck things as I want to then “Done” to accept the changes and exit or “Cancel” to discard all changes and go back to the original setup… but instead once you click something to (un)check it it takes you all the way back out to the main nav screen and you’ve got to click around to get back to the list. Fine if you’re working with one item, annoying if you want to work with more than one.

But I do appreciate how they did things as a device. It’s just hardware with a drive. That you can totally nuke the drive and the desktop software knows how to download and install and get it all going again, that’s great for disaster recovery and simplifying many processes. I like how they did that.

Really, from a geek perspective I like how they put it all together. We’ll see how my actual experiences go once I start actually navigating somewhere with it.

4.5 out of 5 stars

/ hsoi

I write Mac utility software for a living. A software bundle the company creates, CheckIt 2 Performance Suite, was just reviewed and received 4.5 out of 5 stars. The particular product I work on, Spring Cleaning, is the flagship software in that bundle.

What stood out to me in this review versus other reviews of the product is the reviewer seemed to look at the entire product and didn’t overlook key features. Many reviewers seem to only focus on the “pretty icons” and the basic tools, as if they just gave the product a 5 minute look over and then wrote a review. This reviewer appeared to fully examine the product and review based upon that:

Spring Cleaning comes with other features that are used to modify and limit how the other features work, allowing you to choose areas or files that you don’t want it to include. Finally, and very importantly, is the ability to schedule any or all of these functions to be performed automatically. For instance, it is probably a good idea to repair disk permissions once a month, and it is a good idea to allow the Unix maintenance routines to run. Using Spring Cleaning, you can easily set these up to automatically run when it works for your schedule.

Talked about things like Exclusions, and most importantly, the Scheduler. That’s one of the biggest strengths of Spring Cleaning, that you can easily set up automated schedules to keep your Mac running in top shape. As Ron Popeil was fond of saying, “Just set it and forget it!”

We understand a lot of functionality here is something an über-geek could do on their own, but not everyone is an über-geek. We strive to bring a lot of power and functionality “for the rest of us” so that anyone can keep their Mac running well.

I was just happy at the excellent review. Now go buy a copy and keep me in a job. 😉

Just because

/ hsoi

Sometimes it’s fun to do little meme things so folks can get to know you better.

So with that….

  1. What time did you get up this morning? Don’t remember, but I’m generally an early riser.
  2. How do you like your steak? Medium
  3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? Pixar’s “Up”
  4. What is your favorite TV show? Cartoons, Discovery Channel stuff, Outdoor Channel
  5. If you could live anywhere i the world where would it be? Texas is great, I’d like to stay here, but getting maybe 50-100 acres of land to settle down on would be awesome.
  6. What did you have for breakfast? This morning, nothing. Bad John.
  7. What’s yoru favorite cuisine? Whatever Wife cooks. Asian foods like Korean, Thai, Vietnamese is good too. And Texas BBQ.
  8. What foods do you dislike? Anything that stares back at me. Things that aren’t food but pretend to be.
  9. Favorite place to eat? Home, because Wife is an awesome cook.
  10. Favorite dressing? I make a thing with a little vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil, then cracked black pepper. Mmm.
  11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? One that’s paid for, old, but still gets me around. I’d like a 4×4 pickup… Toyota Tacoma maybe.
  12. What are your favorite clothes? T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, shorts or jeans. Just being comfortable.
  13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? New Zealand, Alaska.
  14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? The cup is.
  15. Where would you want to retire? See #5
  16. Favorite time of day? No, not really. Every moment has its place.
  17. Where were you born? In a hospital.
  18. What is your favorite sport to watch? UFC and other such mixed martial arts.
  19. Are you a morning person or a night person? Morning
  20. Do you have any pets? Yes.
  21. Any new and exciting news you’d like to share? If I have it, I tend to blog about it, so just keep reading.
  22. What did you want to be when you were little? A math teacher.
  23. What is your best childhood memory? Only one? Too many to list. But one that just came to mind was me with my paternal grandfather. He was a crotchety old fucker, but I remember one morning while staying at his house he made me breakfast and showed me the right way to make homefries. Plus explaning to me the right way to make fried green tomatoes (you have to slice the thickness just right). I don’t have a lot of memories of my grandfather, but those that I do are neat.
  24. Are you a cat or a dog person? Cat
  25. Are you married? I think so.
  26. Always wear your seat belt? Only when I’m in my car.
  27. Been in a car accident? Yes
  28. Any pet peeves? Yes
  29. Favorite pizza topping? That there are toppings. No cheese pizza! And meat must be included.
  30. Favorite flower? My daughter.
  31. Favorite ice cream? That which I’m eating. Tho H-E-B makes a Creamy Creations flavor called White Chocolate Raspberry Truffle. mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
  32. Favorite fast food restaurant? Sonic, Burger King, Subway, Thundercloud Subs. Mostly anything but McDonald’s.
  33. How many times did you fail your drivers test? None
  34. From whom did you get your last email? Probably some spammer
  35. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Right now? Cabela’s.
  36. Do anything spontaneous lately? Sign on for a deer lease, and bought a snub nose revolver
  37. Like your job? Yes
  38. What was your favorite vacation? 16 years old, family went on a 3-week bus tour of Europe. Running around London on my 16th birthday was cool. Seeing Europe was awesome.
  39. Last person you went out to dinner with? I guess the guys I got the deer lease with, having BBQ out in the nearby town and discussing if we wanted to sign or not (obviously we did).
  40. What are you listening to right now? The sounds of Wife and Kids putting dinner on the table.
  41. What is your favorite color? What is the average airspeed velocity of an unlaiden swallow? Blue.
  42. How many tattoos do you have?  One
  43. Coffee drinker? No.

that’s about the size of it….

And now you know a little more randomness about me.