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Same time

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Yesterday I had a good cry over Sasha. It’s been a few days… gap increasing as time marches on.

I was walking out of the office, prepping for my day, taking the towel off my hair. And for a moment I looked for Sasha to put the damp towel on her head.

She wasn’t there.

And it hurt. A day later it hurts to remember and write this.

I miss my puppy so much.

Miss Potato is here. She’s settled into the household pretty well this past week. She sleeps a lot now. Eating well. A little hiccup with the first poop, but litter box seems to be well in hand now. Very playful. Daughter brought home this tunnel/tube thing – Potato loves it. There’s some sneezing, which we’ll speak with the vet about at her upcoming appointment. All in all good.

She’s very much a people person too. Wants to be with a person. Likes it when a new person enters the room. Flops around to each of us – round robin, likes all the attentions. 😄 Sleeps on my head. Very much cuddle.

Name puns are plentiful. She’s technically a brown shorthair so she’s a (hash) brown potato…

The coexistence of the happy and the sad – that is life.

Once Upon a Time, There Was a Lady Named Tipper Gore…

/ hsoi

April 29, 1993. John C. Daub. Human Communication 441, James Madison University. Senior-level rhetorical studies course, final paper.

If you know me, you know my primary genre of music is heavy metal. Being a teenager in the 1980s, of course Tipper Gore and the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center) was a thing.

That sticker is how you knew it was going to be a good album, thank you very much Ms. Tipper.

It also hit near to my heart. One day I came home from school to find all my music (tapes, etc.) gone. Just… gone!

My mom had thrown them out.

I confronted her. Dad chased me off. “YOU BITCH!”. I got one across the jaw (deservedly so). Yeah… not good. Dad did salvage the tapes. All cool in the end.

Mom had watched the PMRC’s video Rising to the Challenge and also read their book. She had to take action to save her son from the evil. And so… here we are… me still basking in the afterglow of the 2023 Milwaukee Metal Fest…

Sorry mom… it’s not a phase. 😂❤️

Back to my time at JMU…

I don’t recall exactly what HCOM 441 was, but it was basically a high-level rhetorical criticism course by Dr. Anne Gabbard-Alley (who I adore and miss). I don’t know why I chose the PMRC/Tipper to be my topic of this paper (and later presentation where I received high marks from Dr. Carol Jablonski – who I learn as I write this, just passed away). But for whatever reason I had at the time, it was significant enough for me to do it (remember: at the time I was aiming for a career in radio and music industry…). And in writing it, you can see that I actually gave Tipper a fair shot… they did generally succeed at their mission. There was some bullshit too, but… just read the paper.

Why share this? Why not. I mean, it’s the writings of a 20-year-old kid. I don’t think it was that bad, but it’s nothing earth-shattering either. Still, most interesting right now is seeing the pearl clutching. We clutched them then, we clutch them now. And how the spectrum, if you will, has shifted.

daub-tippergore-hcom441-19930429Download

TacCon23

/ hsoi / 5 Comments
📷 Tim Reedy; making me look good during my AIWB Skills block.

My third TacCon has come and gone. What a marvelous time!

What made it extra special for me was Mrs. Hsoi joined me, as a guest of Lynn & Tom. As we embark on 27 years of marriage, to have TacCon23 as an anchor and milestone in our journey of “just the 2 of us” is a heck of a way to start!

Professional

I presented 3 blocks: 2 AIWB Skills (2-hour live fire) and The Aftermath (2-hour lecture, with Lee Weems and Erick Gelhaus). Beyond that, I was at the Mrs’ disposal. We took classes with Tom Givens, Massad Ayoob, John Holschen, Darryl Bolke (who really perked the Mrs’ interest on the topic of “Mouse Gun Mindset”), Lou Ann Hamblin, Erick Gelhaus, Lee Weems. All people well worth learning from. I will call out Darryl’s block, because yeah… having your head screwed on right is primary. It was a game-changer for the Mrs.

Karl and I have revised our book: Strategies and Standards for Defensive Handgun Training for 2023. We sold out of the first print run at TacCon, with more on the way!

Talking with John Farnam about the Barami Hip Grip. 📷 Jamie Meyer.

I’m still carrying the LCR .22LR in a City Special on an EDC Belt Co. Consequently I didn’t compete in the match. One, I didn’t want to complicate things for Martin and Julie. Two, “leave the Mrs alone on the sidelines” was not in my SOP for the weekend, dig?

I proposed to Karl that we do a joint class (lecture and/or live fire) at TacCon24… we shall see.

Personal

This was Mrs Hsoi’s first TacCon – into the deep end with the Rangemaster Family!

She was understandably nervous about attending. Lots of people-ing, with people she knows because I have spoken their name to her. Lots more gunfire than she’s used to hearing. Being away from the house, being comfortable. Being able to sleep (sometimes my snoring is too much; I booked a double-queen suite to try to help). Lots of stress and worries. As the event grew closer, she flipped her script, adopted a “I get to spend time with my honey” mindset, and while a lot of work, it was good. We took the van because there was a lot of stuff to pack and bring (including Spam… 😋).

AIWB Skills live fire. 📷 Jamie Meyer.

The rain on Day 1 didn’t help, but it also was cute because she had a head-to-shins-covering vinyl rain coat in her signature yellow. Caleb & Lisa Causey (familiar faces) were joking about mustard and “Did you get that at Academy?” “No… Prada.” 💅 All of the hugs and laughter helped her feel welcome. And Kristin… oh, you and the Mrs. bonded in a unique way. 😂 The welcome, open, and loving arms that immediately embraced her, taking her in. The inappropriate jokes, the voracious laughter, the abundance of hugs. It was jumping into the deep end, but hey… she got Tim Chandler to almost snort his drink out of his nose! I think she can hang. 😂

It was special on another level. We continue to embark on a new phase in our life, of it being about “just the 2 of us” (Bill Withers singing). This was the first time in ages we have taken an excursion just the two of us. Life’s been about the kids and the whole family for… ever. Oldest recently moved out. Daughter and Youngest in the next 1-3 years. So, we are doing more together. It’s a shift, a good shift, but a shift nonetheless; it requires work, commitment, dedication, flexibility, iteration. But hey, I get to do it with her, and that’s alright. It’s a lot of fun. Adventure is out there! 😎 To have TacCon23 as a milestone, even an anchor point in our continued journey through this thing that they call life? It’s pretty fucking cool. I love you, B. Thank you for being the biggest part of my life.

He looks like a bitch

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

“I had the dumb idea [and thought] hey, this guy looks robbable. He looks like, no offense, a b—-. I got a knife and drill, so why not? Like, if anything is possible, why not do something bad? But it backfired, and things didn’t go the way I wanted them to because he had someone else with him,” she was quoted telling police. 

The woman has been charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.

Facebook Marketplace seller attacked with knife while trying to sell PlayStation

There is much we can learn.

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin police have charged a 19-year-old woman with a felony for allegedly pulling a knife on a man Tuesday after she agreed to buy his PlayStation 4 on Facebook Marketplace, according to police documents. 

Austin. There’s your first clue.

19-year-old woman. Not what comes to mind when you think of someone willing to knife and kill you over a fucking game console. Your life is worth that little to her. 19-years-old. Woman.

The victim arrived at the agreed-upon location with a friend, where he found the interested buyer. The victim put the product on the ground, and moments later, the buyer pulled a knife to his neck. A struggle to get control of the weapon ensued, and the victim’s friend exited the vehicle and attempted to help. 

The three were entangled in a struggle when the friend saw something that looked like a gun. Fortunately, the friend realized the “gun” was a drill. It was at that point that both the victim and his friend fled with his PlayStation, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. 

Good he brought a friend.

Entangled fight… with weapons in play. I thought that shit never happens on the street…?

Fortunately… I guess? But still, from the attacker’s own mouth she knew it was a drill but was counting on the fact it’s gun-shaped. Intent.

When the PlayStation seller returned home, he realized that the woman who allegedly attacked him dropped her wallet in the Playstation box during the altercation. He called the police and reported her, the documents said. 

Lucky for them. And lucky for us, because we get gem quotes like this:

APD took the accused into custody and asked why she attacked the PlayStation seller. 

“I had the dumb idea [and thought] hey, this guy looks robbable. He looks like, no offense, a b—-. I got a knife and drill, so why not? Like, if anything is possible, why not do something bad? But it backfired, and things didn’t go the way I wanted them to because he had someone else with him,” she was quoted telling police. 

The woman has been charged with aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon.

She knew it was dumb. But obviously, this notion has crossed her mind in the past. She’s been evaluating people for a while. She’s not dumb, just naive and fresh.

And she played predator and evaluated prey. The dude looked like a bitch to her. Let that sink in.

Why did she do it? For the thrill for it all.

Your life is a game to her. Robbing and killing you is a “hit of dope” to her. It’s not even worth $200 for a Playstation.

But it shows that interrupting or flipping their script is an important element of gaining advantage. This happened when the 19-year-old pulled the knife, then when the victim’s friend jumped in. Work to gain advantage (process focus).

She will eventually be back out on the streets… will she do it again? and again? and again?

As Dr. Aprill would say, “They are not like you.”

Stay dangerous. Be strong.

(h/t JJ for the article)

Slight adjustments

/ hsoi

I’m entering meso 2-3. I’m seeing what is working and what is not. It’s good to explore the new equipment: some is useful, some not as much, some is great.

Good

Love the hack squat. I suck at it, and only one way to not suck at it…

I like the Hammer Strength Iso-Lateral Row (plate-loaded) – good strong, stable, general row (I am using top-handles, pronated grip).

I do like how the HS calf machines have angled footrest because I don’t have to readjust my footing.

There’s something about the HS Iso-Lateral Leg Extension that is great – I think it’s where the weight is in the path/curve, especially at extension for the squeeze.

Bad

Some of the press machines don’t line up well for me. I keep playing around with placements and settings.

I don’t feel I’m getting much from the machine preacher curls.

Cable Y-raises don’t seem to be doing much for my delts.

Changes

I’m going to keep meso 2-3 as written, adding in some intensity techniques. Any changes will come in 3-1.

Upper A: Push emphasis. Keep HS IL Shoulder Press (so long as my shoulders are ok with it). Probably drop the HS Iso-Lateral Incline Press in favor of 30º barbell inclines. I want to get some chest work, but I have to remember I’m wanting to bias delts more in this macrocycle. Drop cable y’s in favor of the incline db y’s – those I seemed to respond to well. Then swap the heavy HS IL Row today for the HS selectorized row (from Upper B day) for 3×8-12.

Lower A: no real change, as I think it’s working well. Hacks are death. I love the leg extension machine.

Upper B: pull emphasis. Make the HS IL Row the opener heavy movement (instead of the selectorized, which is moved to Upper A as mentioned above). I wonder if I switch to a really light but squeezy db preacher curl if that might be fun (instead of the machine preacher). Iso-Lateral Wide Chest is fun.

Lower B: TBD based on how my body is feeling.

So, not huge changes really. I just am finding where things lie and how stuff works for me.

Also, finding allowances and flow for the new gym.

Wrist update

/ hsoi

My left wrist is improving. The issues have shifted, but I think I know what needs doing. The hard part will be doing it.

I can still do things. I mean, yesterday I incline benched 260×3@8 – which is a lifetime PR for me on inclines. If I wrap my wrists when it gets heavier it’s fine. In fact, what’s more bothering me now is the metacarpals due to typing.

I need to change my office/typing setup. I need to get off the laptop. Full keyboard, better monitors on swing-arms so they can be eye level and typing at a good level for head and eye position. I need better typing posture. I need better posture overall (the eternal struggle #IYKYK) yes, but posture while typing is especially needed. I think better equipment setup is an easy win. Having the UpLift helps too; happy purchase that was.

I need to stretch more, and stretch things you may not think – bending my fingers backwards to get more stretch in extended positions. My fingers are curled all the time, from lifting weights, shooting guns, typing all day every day. I have been working the extensor bands. I’ve noticed my fingers tripping over themselves more when I type these days. It’s in part due to the typing “style” due to the above setup issues, but I also feel my fingers getting stiffer. Could it be aging? Absolutely could. I don’t know what it is, but I certainly know my finger muscles themselves could use some stretching to help my fingers be less curled in relaxed positions. Just more “yoga”, more stretching and using my body.

It’s getting better. Injuries like this are an opportunity to find other ways to work, to solve, to continue progressing.

Stretching

I’m not happy, Bob

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

“I’m not happy, Bob”

Gilbert Huph (The Incredibles)

I injured my left wrist. Dumbbell bench pressing the other day, I felt something weird. In my dry fire, it doesn’t feel great. I incline benched 245×4 on Friday and no issues (stable movement, wraps, straight and strong wrists). Bending is the issue, especially wrist extension. Even keeping my fingers at home row cocks the wrist and doesn’t feel hot.

I am signed up to take Gabe White’s Pistol Shooting Solutions Oct 1-2 at KR Training. I needed to assess my capabilities, primarily interested in validating work I’ve been doing in dry practice, and now also seeing how my wrist would manage.

Not good, Bob. Well, good and bad. First the bad.

Since it’s prep for Gabe, I ran Bill Drills to explore (it served both my goals). I shot 150-ish rounds and had to stop. The way the wrist gets cocked, (esp. at positions 3 and 4) coupled with the percussive nature of recoil just started to hurt in the bad way. I remember when I won my Light Pin in 2019 how beat up and raw my hands were 3/4 way through the class. If that’s the level of abuse my hands can expect, my current situation doesn’t bode well.

I’m not giving up yet. I’m going to see what I can do. If nothing else, now I get to really work on my strong-hand-only shooting. 😂 

In other news, I shot Bill Drills because I wanted 1. DTFAH (Draw To First Acceptable Hit), 2. recoil management. In dry practice I noticed I have a tendency to slightly cant the gun, just enough to confound my presentation. When I get the gun vertical, it’s better. I still suck with the dot, but it’s getting better and I think a seed of confidence has been sown. I have also been applying stuff from Mike Seeklander on grip. I saw good results dry. Live I did my best to just watch the sight movie, focus on the grip experiment, and see what happened. Results were… good. I still suck at it, and practicing it will be difficult with my wrist situation, but I’m pleased and feel I’m getting a little further down the road.

I want to take Gabe’s class, not for the trinket but for the learning that will inevitably occur. 2019’s class was transformative, and I have no qualms about being the shittiest shooter in class so long as I’m learning. It’s just gonna come down to the physicality of it all. Gonna work and see what I can do.

You gotta know when to fold ’em

/ hsoi / 10 Comments

I accomplished a key task: migrating away from MacHighway.com/Deluxe.com to A2Hosting.com. Things are still settling down, but so far so good.

hsoi.com has a new look. Go check it out.

I feel weird with self-promotion like this, because it feels like it makes me come across larger than I really am. I’m a big fucking imposter. But, the website is good to do (as I look towards where I’m attempting to go with my life).

blog.hsoi.com is a wordpress.com site with a CNAME. I’ve now failed at a few attempts to migrate it to a wordpress.org install on hsoi.com. Migrating the subdomain is the tricky part. I’m open to suggestions.

I am bummed. For years I’ve wanted to self-host my blog, and now seemed like a good time. It was a good time, and that permitted me the bandwidth to try it a few times, and learn a few things (i.e. fail a bunch). So, it’s all good in the end.

I need to move on to other things. WordPress.com works well, and has really upped its game in offerings – I have no qualms with WordPress.com and in fact may recommend it (tho I am not happy with the breakage of posting to Facebook Pages that are “new style”). I just want to self-host. I’ll come back to this another time. I have other projects to attend to.

Is this thing on?

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Is blog.hsoi.com back? You tell me please… because DNS propagation is a thing.

I’m undertaking a long-overdue migration of my IT services (web, email, domain names, across numerous sites). It’s two-fold:

  1. Move away from MacHighway.com / Deluxe.com
  2. Clean up, refactor, discard or pay technical debt, start “fresh”.

Move

Many years ago I hosted with a provider: ItsAMac.com. I’ve loved Apple since the IIe. An ISP that groks Mac and even uses Xserves? Sweet! Plus they were small and had great customer service. Life was good. They rebranded to MacHighway.com, then started noticing the changes getting… generic. cPanel is life now. And then, hardware/server migrations… over and over. Eventually seeing that the company was sold to someone, then another. I don’t recall all the history, but the latest was to Deluxe.com, which has been the worst. They heavily botched a server migration (which I am to understand from the Twitterverse that they were putting servers on trucks and driving them to a new center). Handling was terrible, from a customer service perspective. It was the final straw, and I overcame inertia and moved.

I am now using A2 Hosting. Jury is still out if it was a good move or not, but after much digging around, compare/contrast vs. my needs, and they seemed right. Small incremental trials have proven good, including their customer service who have been responsive, patient, and helpful. Yes, the quality of answers can vary from service rep to rep, but overall it’s good. Best is they are responsive. It may take a couple back and forths, but it gets figured. So, on that alone I’m pleased with the move so far.

Oh and the site is fast is fast as fuck, boy. (meme)

Forward

This was a perfect opportunity to just discard, clean up, and move on. hsoi.com used to have some basic and crude .html files that I wrote probably in BBEdit. This was in the days before CSS and responsive and whatnot: just text, maybe using a table for layout. It was what it was for the time, but… it’s time to go. I am sad that the “MacOS MUD Zone” is no more – it was kinda fun being the Mac MUD dude, but the reality is those were Classic Mac apps and it’s just time to let it all go. WordPress is a thing now.

One thing I’ve long wanted to do is migrate the blog from wordpress.com to my own wordpress.org install. I figured this would be the right time.

I was… half right.

This is a good time, but I should have waited and done it in two phases: 1. get away from MacHighway/Deluxe, 2. do new modern stuff. I started to blend 2 into 1 because this project has been taking a while and with so many things that require “just wait” (e.g. DNS propagation), I thought I could overlap.

However, the migration from wordpress.com to wordpress.org hasn’t been so straightforward, especially because a subdomain is in place: which currently points to and is required really for the wordpress.com-based site to operate, but also needs to be the same subdomain for the wordpress.org install. So… this caused some “false starts” (including trying to use WordPress Multisite). Eventually I realized things weren’t working, needed to back out, but something got hosed with DNS. It took some time, but it looks like A2’s “advanced” support may have gotten things back on track.

I need to wrap up the “Move” portion of things, THEN once I know it’s clean, do the “Forward” part.

So I think I have things “back to how they were before”. I am going to complete my move away from MacHighway/Deluxe. Once that’s good, I’ll look at migration.

This project has taken way too long and caused me enough grief; but I’ve learned a lot.

“Be a Bridge”

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

This. This right here. Thank you, Dr. Yamane for posting that.

David Yamane's avatarGun Curious

Graduation ceremonies always lift my spirits, so after a tough weekend confronting the reality of white supremacist hate in America, I was glad to be able to set that aside and recognize the achievements of over 1,000 Wake Forest University undergraduates (including my youngest son) who completed their final two years of college under extraordinary circumstances.

As I told my own students on the final day of class this semester, I hope that the challenges they face make them stronger, more resilient, more creative, and more compassionate people.

Wake Forest 2022 Commencement. Photo by David Yamane

The commencement speaker this year was Van Jones, who is best known as a CNN political commentator. His address hit all the right notes for me. Here I want to highlight just a couple, but you can watch the entire address on YouTube or read it at the Wake Forest University commencement site.

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