Family

Domestic archeological expedition

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

My more recent endeavors in life are amassing lots of stuff. What happens when you acquire stuff? You need a place to put that stuff. Thank you George Carlin:

But instead of going and finding a place to put more stuff, I’m just getting rid of some old shit so I can reuse that storage space for my new stuff. So into the closet I go, figuring out what’s there…. boxes that haven’t been unpacked since moving into the house many years ago, things you can’t remember the last time you looked at. It’s a trip down nostalgia lane.

It’s always an interesting education for my wife and especially my kids when things like this happen. It gives them a peek into the past. For instance, I got to show the kids what a cassette tape is. Even found a player and was able to play some of them… you know, the mixed tapes you’d make, recording your favorite songs off the radio, or when you were really cool and had one of those dual cassette stereo/boom-boxes that could allow you to dub your friend’s purchased album onto a blank tape? or better, the dub of the dub of the dub of the dub such that the tape hiss was the dominant sound you actually heard? Yeah, good times.

Found a lot of old pictures. It’s a shame my scanner died years ago. I need to collect them all and take them somewhere and spend an afternoon just scanning them all in, sending them to old friends and having a good laugh at the memories. Y’know, I think that broken scanner is actually buried in the closet… well, something else to toss (yes, this would go to Goodwill’s electronics disposal center, not the landfill).

Other things I found:

  • tons of 3.5″ floppy disks. It’s been years since I had a computer that could even read one of these.
  • tons of CD’s… old CodeWarrior CDs (gazillions of these, from my past life), lots of old Mac software, things that you think for a second might be worth keeping but then you see it requires a 680×0 processor and these new Mac-Intel boxen running Leopard will never grok them
  • a set of KISS McFarlane Series 1 action figures, new in box
  • tons of old cassette tapes, from my earliest heavy metal years. Man, I need a way to convert them to MP3’s… too many good and rare albums here.
  • lots of old computer books
  • a lot of old vinyl and some neat things too:
    • Sepultura “Arise” picture disc
    • Monster Magnet “Superjudge” red vinyl
    • White Zombie “La Sexercisto” in glow-in-the-dark vinyl
    • tons of old and rare Red Decibel 7″ stuff from The Coup de Grace, Drop Hammer, Walt Mink, Libido Boyz, Last Crack
    • The Journey “Raised on Radio” album I won from Power 105 WAVA. I remember waking up, getting ready for my paper route, 5th caller wins, I called in and won not just the album but a key to the “Power Porsche”… a key that could start up a Porsche and if it did it was yours! Sadly, the weekend of the event I had to go on some youth group retreat so I didn’t actually get to try it… I think my Dad and younger sister and cousin went instead. Didn’t win, of course.
    • Autographed copies of albums from Treponem Pal and Malevolent Creation 
    • Lots of other stuff
  • Stuff from my old radio days
  • Promotional materials
  • band promo pictures
  • air checks from all the various stations I worked at
  • carts with my show bumpers on them
  • posters (many autographed)
  • A couple boxes of old things from growing up
    • My 8th grade English class journal
    • All my homework and papers from Drivers Ed class
    • An old model kit of an SR-71 Blackbird, and lots of Testors model paint jars
    • some old t-shirts
    • a couple cool pencil boxes from Korea, which my kids quickly usurped
    • A bunch of old birthday cards and letters, a couple of which included hand-written letters from my paternal grandmother… cards I tossed, the letters I kept.
    • A ton of my old Boy Scouts stuff… from the little advancement/achievement cards for merit badges and rank; certificates of youth leadership training, Patrol Leader, and Senior Patrol Leader; Patrol Leader Handbook; a cool leather “50 mile canoe trip” patch; a bunch of useful handouts and other reading material, good for camping or other outings today (Scouts or otherwise)
    • 8 to 10 (lost count) glasses cases.
    • One pair of old glasses… plastic frames, huge lenses (to go with the onion on my belt). Put them on, the wife and kids had a good laugh.
    • Yearbooks from middle school and high school, and a couple from undergrad
    • band trip pictures
    • autographed picture of me meeting President Ronald Reagan in The Oval Office
    • More things that I can remember
  • A bunch of my old Magic: The Gathering cards. I saw some kid with Magic cards a few weeks ago and I realized that I used to play that game… 15-ish years ago. 
  • And there’s still more stuff to be discovered I’m sure. It’s going to take the rest of today, at least, to get things fully cleaned and reorganized in there.

    • It’s quite a trip down memory lane. A lot of stuff was junk that was no problem to throw away, but there’s no question some stuff your heart just won’t let you toss. And I know if I really had the gumption there’s a fair lot of stuff I could put on eBay and could make some money with.

    So, blogging will be light until this is done.

     

    Updated: added more stuff that I’m uncovering.

    Updated 2: Been working at it all day. Donated a LOT of stuff to Goodwill. Threw out a lot of stuff… had to get over the nostalgia of things because if I haven’t looked at it in this many years, do I really need to care and keep it? Many things cleared out. And while I moved a bunch of new things into the closet, in the end there’s a lot more room in there now. So sum total of it all puts me in the negative which is good! Got rid of far more stuff… things are better organized and located now. Big win for all the work done in the last 24 hours. Got some tax deductions from all the donations. Uncluttered. Things are good.

    Of course now…. I guess Carlin would say it’s time for me to buy more stuff. 😉

    A Zen Moment in Parenting

    / hsoi / 2 Comments

    This is a great little parenting story.

    First, I think the situation was handled perfectly. Sure he could have taken the simple route and spanked the kid, or “time-out”,  or grounded him, but that really wouldn’t directly address the problem. I often find it’s better to address the problem in a manner directly related to the problem. Denying the Xbox for a week wouldn’t address this problem. He was able to help his child see himself, discover his own problem, and correct his problem on his own. All the parent did was be patient and guide.

    It’s tough to get people to change by forcing them to change; they’re not necessarily going to change for you. The more successful route to get someone to change is for them to change themselves. It’s tougher for you to do, you really have to take a different tack and approach in guiding them to see things for themselves, but often that’s how things tend to work best.

    Of course, there are some things that folks are so emotionally tied up into that getting them to see reason is quite difficult. But just because it may be difficult for you to do doesn’t mean the other person is a lost cause or that it’s not worth making the effort to try. Patience. Devotion.

    81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival

    / hsoi

    Today the family went to the 81st Annual Zilker Kite Festival.

    I have wanted to attend this for some years and for some reason or other it never happened, so I was determined to attend this year. And attend we did!

    We took the shuttle to Austin’s famous Zilker Park, and in a way, the shuttle was an event unto itself. The city provided free shuttles to/from the event, and they used school buses for it. This was the first time my kids got to ride a school bus (I rode them all the time when I was growing up), so now they sorta know what it’s like… minus the loud kids, bullying, and other assorted mayhem that comes with the school bus. 🙂  It brought back memories of being on the bus Safety Patrol!

    After arriving at the park we went to the “build-a-kite” workshop. It was a free workshop sponsored by HEB and others and you could build a basic kite. Middle child and Youngest child opted to build a kite, and they flew just fine. The wind today was ample for kite flying, but it would die down at times and many kites would be crashing to the ground. Yesterday the winds in Austin were 25-35 MPH steady and gusty, so that would have been some very interesting kite flying weather.

    We walked around, checked out many of the kites. All sorts of kites of all shapes, sizes, designs, colors, and variety. It’s almost impossible to describe or even capture on film just how cool it was to look up in the sky and see hundreds of kites flying together. It’s just something you have to experience.

    We ate “fair food”, from corn dogs to sausage on a stick to snow cones to cotton candy to funnel cakes. Yes… I can’t pass up a funnel cake, tho the one we had was very oily (I suspect they didn’t let it drain enough). Oh yes, and roasted corn. Mmm. Everything was rather expensive, but all proceeds after expenses are benefiting charities and worthy causes so it’s all good. I think I’m going to have a very light salad for dinner tho. 😉

    After watching many kites, flying our free kites, and walking around and seeing all there was to see, we ended up buying our own kite. A nice nylon “triangle-style” (I don’t know what the proper term is). It flew quite well, and I had a lot of fun flying it. It was tough flying tho, with so many kites in the air, so many people around, you didn’t have the total freedom to roam where and how needed to keep the kite aloft. Thus, the most often heard thing today was: *thud* “Sorry!!” “No problem!” as kites would dive down, hit someone in the head, strings tangle around you, tails whipping in your face. But no one got mad; everyone expected to get hit sooner or later. It was a day filled with laughter, smiles, and fun. Good times.

    If you haven’t been to the Kite Festival, you need to try it. And do like we did, go in the morning, leave in the afternoon. The lines for the shuttle were unreal, but since we’re early birds well… we were in and out no problem.

    Range Report

    / hsoi / 3 Comments

    As I mentioned previously, I got my XD-9 back so of course I had to go to the range to try it out. Took Oldest Child with me.

    The range was rather busy today (one reason I prefer to go on mid-week mornings), so consequently I couldn’t do the things I wanted to do to really try things out. Brought the 10/22 for Oldest, set him up at 25 yards and let him go to town. You can see his results (no, the picture isn’t upside down, I stapled the target upside down since I was in a hurry). Overall, not bad. He’s certainly improving.

    One issue we were up against is the scope was loose; actually, the base is loose. So, I’m going to have to fix that. I was having him work on fundamentals: body position, focusing on the crosshairs (since there’s no front sight), good trigger press, and good follow-through. That’s the toughest thing, getting him to follow-through and not go “bangdidihitit?”. As you can see from the grouping, he’s off to the left. This could be a bit of trigger slap (I did work with him a bit on a better trigger press, looking for the “surprise break”), but given how very consistent he was on this and other targets, I’m presently going to chalk it up to the scope being loose and thus off zero. I know it was frustrating for him to not “aim middle of red dot, hit middle of red dot”, but it was a good lesson in learning that it’s more about the grouping than always hitting the middle of the dot (tho yes, that’s important). The wiggly scope gave a good and digestible excuse for today, and this allows to lead into a greater discussion of things like trajectory, zeroing sights, height-over-bore, and so on. Stuff for later. Right now, my main focus is for him to work on the fundamentals, see success, see himself improving, and enjoy what he’s doing. So far, so good. I’m happy with his progress.

     

    As for me, again because the range was rather busy I just set up 2 target stands and put 5 6″ paper plates on each stand. No defensive or other “real” shooting, this was to be nothing more than a basic running of the gun to see how she now is. I set them up at 15 yards, which was good because I need to work on 15-25 yard (i.e. greater than 7 yards) shooting, and with these new sights I knew I could get the accuracy I couldn’t get with the XS Sights (the paper plates would disappear completely behind the big front dot). Plus given the way the range was set up, for Oldest to shoot at 25 yards and for me to be next to him, I had to then shoot at 15 yards… so really, it all worked out.

    How did the gun do? Better than me. 🙂 The trigger is really tight, in the good way. I will have to do a lot of dry-fire practice to get used to the trigger. My “muscle memory” wanted to have a normal XD trigger, travelling and feeling like a stock XD trigger does, so things felt odd and I wasn’t shooting as well as I normally do, but that’s to expected. I couldn’t help but be impressed with the trigger; again, it’s so tight, and yes I’d like to try it side-by-side with a good 1911 trigger to compare. Bottom line? I just need a lot of dry-fire with it and get used to it before I expend any more ammo at the range.

    The Dawson Sights. You have to realize, while it’s February, the temperature today is in the high-80’s. It’s bright, sunny, I put on sunscreen before going to the range. This is an abnormal day weather-wise, but still a great one. And with all that sunlight, the fiber optic front sight just shined like a beacon. You couldn’t help but see it. Thinking back on it, the fact I couldn’t “see” the rear sight is testimony to a cleaner sight picture. As well, the wider notch (well at least the combination of the front and rear made the rear notch wide) well… everything just lines up. Your eye gets pulled to that front sight, which is what you want to focus on, and there’s nothing else to clutter the sight picture. But the other parts that must be in the sight picture are there and are there only enough for you to do what you need to do with them. The greater “whitespace” on either side of the front post might just be thousandths of an inch wider than stock, but it makes such a difference to my eyes in terms of picking up the sight picture and knowing what it is and thus what may need to be corrected to have an ideal sight picture. It’s hard to explain, but this sight picture feels like the sight picture I want. There’s nothing to distract me, my eyes go where they should go and not where they shouldn’t. And my accuracy is far far better than they were with the XS Sights. Again, I’ll need more dry-fire practice with them, but so far I really like them. 

    One thing I want to do is head to the local indoor range to get a better feel for the sights. The indoor range has the targets on a track so it’s very easy to adjust distance from 0 to 100 yards, and to do so without having to get the entire firing line to stop while you dance around with targets. This way I can get a better idea how the sights are zeroed and how they perform at various distances.

    All in all, I’m pleased with how the custom work turned out. The gun itself seems good, it’s now just me that needs some work.

    In related news, I ordered a SmartCarry and it came in the mail today. Can’t wait to try it out.

    Updated: Talking about the day over supper with the family, I remembered a few things:

    1. Oldest got to learn about malfunctions! He had at least one stovepipe, 3 duds. 
    2. I kept working on that Todd Jarrett “grip 20% harder” technique. Man, that works. But I still have problems with my grip: one I know what to do about, one I don’t. The one I know what to do about is to just get a stronger grip… building those muscles up. The one I don’t know what to do about… it’s getting my left (non-shooting) hand to really hang on. Eventually my right (shooting) hand just works its way out of the left. I have felt that I need to thicken the grip up a bit so my big hands can better fit, leaves a little more “empty space” on the grip so the heel of my left hand can rest more “meat” on the grip (shooting an M&P with the big backstrap was great in this regard). Or maybe it’s just a matter of grip strength. 🙂