Kids

Fish and trust

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

An old high school friend posted to her Facebook status that her kids’ pet fish died. She was wondering what to do: buy a new one, don’t buy one. I trust it was the first death experience for her kids, and this is nothing to take lightly… even tho it’s just a fish, for the kids the loss still hurts.

What got me was the number of people commenting that she shouldn’t tell the kids, don’t let them know, and to just go out and buy a new fish and pretend nothing happened. I grant it’s “just a fish” but that approach doesn’t feel right to me.

Death is a part of life. In fact, it’s truly the only guarantee in life (taxes don’t have to be). You will experience death throughout your life and IMHO it’s better to have a healthy understanding and acceptance of it. Avoiding the issue, what good does that serve? Sure maybe it spares the child a bit of hurt now, but life is full of hurt. Shouldn’t we be teaching our children how to be strong and cope? To allow them to feel the emotion and pain of loss, and learn how to manage it so they can better deal with bigger losses later in life? While I certainly try to prevent my children from being hurt, I also understand that sometimes a little pain now could save them from big pain later in life.

A fish also happened to be the first death my children experienced. It was painful for them; I can still hear how Oldest sounded when he was crying and lamenting the loss. We comforted the children. We had a little burial out in the back flowerbed. We talked a lot. The kids didn’t want to get a new fish, but they also didn’t want to throw out his fish bowl either. We just went with the flow from day to day. We didn’t want to hide anything (we couldn’t… they were the ones that discovered the fish had died). We didn’t lie to them.

To me, that’s the crux of it all. If you don’t tell the kids and just go buy a new fish, that’s lying. We teach our children not to lie, so shouldn’t we best teach it by setting the proper example? To me, trust matters a great deal, especially in your relationship with your children. I know as I enter these teenager years, trust is going to become even more important. I’d rather be honest with my children so they know they can always trust me. Life isn’t always pretty, and to me lack of trust makes it even less pretty.

The things my kids do and say….

/ hsoi

Oldest also received a deer call in his Christmas stocking from Grandpa.

He’s sitting at the back door making some doe sounds, seeing if he can get a buck to wander into the backyard area.

Youngest is sitting next to his brother adding in his own calls like…. “She’s available!!!”

Heh heh. 🙂

Morning with Daughter

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Had a fun morning with Daughter.

The main purpose was to go to the gun range to have her try out the AR with the scope. But we made a morning out of it, stopping for breakfast at Denny’s. We were going to go to Waffle House but there was a Denny’s on the way and Daughter wanted to try it because she’s never been to one. No problem, we changed plans and stopped at the Denny’s for breakfast. I figured as long as we were doing firsts, I had a t-bone steak and eggs for breakfast; never done that before but always wanted to. It was terrible, but I loved every minute of it. 🙂

We were surprised how many people were out at the range this morning, given the temperatures were just above freezing. Apart from that tho the morning was very nice, so it made sense some people were out. We settled over on the “E” range because no one was there so it would give us the most flexibility. The one downside was I wanted to start her at 25 yards (thus originally I hoped to use position 41 on the “A” range), but 40 meters would have to do and frankly I didn’t think it’d be a problem.

Got settled in, got her set up on the rest. Still, she was too short. Luckily we found an old office chair and we could raise the seat up some, which got her there. Set up the targets on the 40 meter rails, and let fly. Daughter did quite well. A few days ago I had a talk with the kids about trajectory, “height over bore”, zeroing, point of impact vs. point of aim, and things like that. That this rifle was sighted to be zeroed at 100 yards, thus when they shot at the closer targets they wouldn’t hit where they were aiming. I told them, for, now, to keep aiming dead center on the target and just watch where the bullets impact and strive for good groupings. I’m glad we had the talk before we went as it made it much easier to handle things on the range.

Daughter shot for a bit, then I shot for a bit. I was pretty happy with my shooting, with some pretty tight groups. I did have some fliers and I know it’s because I am not used to that heavy single-stage trigger. I know the trigger also was giving Daughter some troubles, and I think that convinced her to dry fire the rifle at home to work on it. Between the cold air, the steady cold breeze, and the heavy trigger, I know it was giving Daughter troubles in breaking the shot. She had no trouble getting on paper and putting the bullet basically where she wanted, but doing it in a timely manner was rough. It’s just going to take practice with the rifle, but I think she’ll be fine. Next time we go out I’ll try “walking” the target rails on the “E” range (it’s a silhouette range), starting at 40 meters, then 50, then 75, then 100 and see how they do. I am pretty sure that as long as they can keep things steady, they’ll do fine out to 100 yards/meters.

Daughter didn’t get as much trigger time as she wanted — she was just too cold. So we packed it up and she sat in the car while I worked with my XD-9 a bit. No targets, just shooting into the berm. I’ve been re-reading the Brian Enos book and I wanted to do some stuff with grip, relaxation, and “floating the gun.” I picked up some good feedback and some points to ponder. I’d like to try running a lot of Bill Drills at this point and see how I do, as that’d give me a lot more tangible feedback. The cool thing was how much I stopped thinking about everything else and just let my eyes “drive the gun,” as Enos puts it. It really does make a big difference. As well, while I see lots of merit to the Todd Jarrett “grip 20% tighter kung fu action grip”, there’s also Enos’ take of being more relaxed and just letting the gun do its thing. You can’t be limp wristed, but yes I find the gun works a lot better when I have a “medium” grip and just let the gun do what it does. There’s a balance to find. More things for me to play with later.

A good morning. Not just because I got to go shooting, but because I got to spend time with Daughter. That’s the best part.

Updated: I forgot. Daughter got to learn some things about ammo. We were shooting Georgia Arms Canned Heat. Daughter pressed trigger, it went “pop” not “bang”. She looked up, puzzled. Her first misfire. I took care of it. I pulled back the charging handle and when the case ejected I noticed a lot of powder still in the case. Ugh. Good thing I had a cleaning rod with me. Bullet was only lodged an inch or two into the barrel, but I explained how this could be a bad thing. When I examined the case I immediately saw the problem… and I showed it to Daughter and asked her if she saw it (I didn’t say what it was), and she saw it. The primer wasn’t fully seated.

I’ve generally had good luck with Georgia Arms stuff so I’m not really holding this against them. But these things can happen. Glad Daughter got to experience and learn about them.

Tourist in my own town

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My Dad and his wife are in town visiting for a few days.

Dad is always on the go. For someone his age he’s so go-go-go that he tires out me, Wife, and Kiddos. 🙂  But it’s good to see him and it also forces us, every time he comes to visit, to think of new things to go see and do. Thus we finally get to do some of those things that you never do unless someone visits.

For instance, lived in this town how many years? And it wasn’t until some months ago at my buddy W’s wedding rehearsal dinner at Shoreline Grill that I got to see the famous Congress Street Bridge bats. My kids have never seen the bats, tho they do get to see some bats here and there because a few must live in our neighborhood as we see some bats flying at evening twilight from time to time. So one plan we made was to go see the bats.

One reason I wanted to post about this was to get more information about the bats out there. A big reason why I hadn’t taken the kids to see the bats was because I couldn’t figure out some of the logistical details like: when do they come out? (about sunset) where can you watch them? (anywhere around the bridge but…) where can you park? (parking lot of the Austin-American Statesman, which then has a little hill at the south-east corner of the bridge where you can sit and watch them, all for free). Just little logistical details like that. I’d search around and not be able to find anything like this. Oh sure I’d find lots that talked about the bats, just not covering logistical details. The best thing I finally discovered was the “bat hotline” at 512-416-5700 x3636. It’s a recording that tells what’s going on with the bats, some information about them, and about what time the bats are flying.

While we were not in peak season (it’s usually during warmer months that there is peak flight), certainly 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats still need to eat! We had lunch at Freebirds World Burrito, played 36 holes of golf at Peter Pan Mini-Golf (I finished both courses, each scoring 50, with a couple holes-in-one, and coming in 1st place; my Dad came in 2nd place; Daughter did pretty well too), then it was about 5:00 PM and with sun setting within the hour we opted to head over to the Austin-American Statesman’s building off the south-east corner of the Congress Ave (now Ann Richards) Bridge. Parking was no problem. A little walk down the hike-and-bike trail and we found the little grassy hill right by the bridge. Lots of other people were there, all waiting for the bats. You could hear them all “chirping” under the bridge. It was pretty cool. I kept remarking how I just spent 3 days waiting on animals to appear, I was getting kinda tired of that. 😉  Eventually a few bats started to appear, zipping right overhead. Then, the stream started. From where we were we could just see an endless stream of bats coming out from under the bridge. I do mean endless. It was wild to watch.

One tip I gave my kids was there were 2 ways you could watch. One, just hold your eyes still, and you’ll watch all the bats zooming by in a blur. Two, move your eyes with the bats and while you may only “see them” for a second or two, the complementary motion of bat and eyeball in the same direction will make the bat look “slower” and thus you’ll get a clearer picture of the bat and not just a blur going by. When I told this to the Kids they all appreciated it, especially Youngest because now he felt like he could really see the bats better. Tip for you parents.

After a while well… that was enough. We headed back to the car and over to Threadgill’s World Headquarters for some dinner.

Good times.

Learning to Program

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I learned to program on my Apple //e a long long ago.

But I did take a class in undergrad that was a sort of introduction to programming for non-programmers (now that I think about it, I don’t know why I took the class as it was well below my knowledge level). It used a neat book called Karel The Robot. You can Google on “Karel the Robot” and all sorts of stuff comes up, including a lot of love and praise for it. It’s really a good way to learn how to program because it’s simple and friendly. It doesn’t focus upon a particular language, which is part of the simplicity and appeal. It allows people to learn about general programming concepts and constructs, and how to use them as building blocks to solve problems. After you grok the concepts, then you can get yourself caught up in the semantics of a particular language… trying to do both at once is just too much to focus on.

So I’m writing this blog entry as a bookmark to myself. I’ve been wanting to teach my kids how to program and wanting to use Karel to do it. So I found Karel on SourceForge. I also found RUR-PLE (history of it here) which is a Karel-like approach that uses Python. There’s also Guido van Robot. I really like Python as a language (tho I don’t get to use it often enough), and feel it’d be a great first language for my kids.

Anyway there you go. Karel.

Father Son Time

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Work ran late tonight. Consequently I wasn’t going to make my martial arts class in time. *sigh*

So let’s make the best of it. I headed to the garage to fiddle with the reloading gear. 🙂  Since it’s a single-stage press I’m going to set it up for one task, then do as much of that task as possible. In this case, put a 9mm resizing die on there and go through ALL of my 9mm brass and deprime and resize it.

As I got rolling, Wife and Kids came home. Oldest saw what I was doing and came over.

“Can I try?”

“Sure.”

Gave him the basic instructions to move the handle through its full range of motion. Don’t rush it. Got to point out a few things, teach him a few things. Even encountered a Berdan primed case and got to show him the difference.

Oldest just sat at the press, putting in an old case, cranking the handle, taking out the reshaped and deprimed case, lather, rinse, repeat. He just kept doing it with no signs of stopping. Seemed happy doing it too. So I set about better organizing everything on the bench, sorting some things out, cleaning some things up.

Oldest just kept working the press.

We talked. Cracked jokes.

I took over for a bit. I stopped for some reason then Oldest snaked his way in and started working the press again. Go figure.

I eventually cut back in. Gave him my tub of non-usable brass and told him to get a pair of pliers out and crush them to ensure they don’t get used. He had fun with that. Told him to get the big pliers out for increased leverage and he really had fun with that. 🙂 I worked the press, watching him squish brass with glee and listened to him explain to me the differences between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd class levers. I know what they are, but it doesn’t matter as I’m not listening to him to learn about levers… I’m just listening to him because he’s my Son and has something to say.

And so there we were in the garage. Father and Son. Talking, joking, working, playing… and sometimes just sitting in silence.

Oldest asked me if I was having fun reshaping the brass. I said that I was neutral about it. It’s repetitive, technically it’s boring. But I know it’s going to be good work and serve a useful end, so I’m good with it all. But that really, what I was enjoying more than anything was just spending time with him.

He seemed to like that.

I think I liked it more. 🙂

 

Found A Cane

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As you know, I’ve been looking for a cane. My requirements were pretty simple: hardwood, crook neck, simple design, something that could be used for walking but also fighting, that I could take it anywhere (e.g. onto an airplane). It was a bit frustrating that I couldn’t find a cane anywhere in town that fit these needs. This is understandable tho, as most people who need a cane need it for true assistance with walking thus needs can be filled in other ways, such as using aluminum canes or wood with non-crook necks. I admit I was “this close” to ordering something online if this one place didn’t pan out.

But it did.

Someone had suggested I try out a feed store, so I went to a local Tractor Supply Co.. They didn’t have any canes in stock (they said sometimes they get them, but they’re never ordered they just show up every so often). However, the gentlemen there said to try a place called Callahan’s. I stored that in my head.

Daugther and Wife have started taking horse riding lessons, and they need some boots. I asked Tom where in town I could find boots that would suit the need but wouldn’t cost much. Until Daugther stops growing I’m not going to invest tons of money (even cheap Chinese boots are still kinda expensive), and I’ll spend the money on Wife once she knows what she wants. Tom suggested Callahan’s. So OK, now I have a few reasons to go there.

So today we went and visited Callahan’s General Store. The website will tell you nothing about the place. But folks, this place is awesome. It is a general store, with a little of everything. Western clothing, boots, hats, housewares, lots of cast iron cookware, toys, hardware (i.e. nails, screws), plumbing, feed, vermin traps, horse tack, livestock management needs, Texas-sized belt buckles, housewares, knick-knacks, even chicks and ducklings and sometimes rabbits. It was amazing the breadth of things they offered.

Upon walking in one of the first things I saw? A rack of canes. 🙂 I dug through it. A lot of neat canes but only a few crook-neck ones. Of the ones in there, this is the one I chose:

The cane is made by Brazos Walking Sticks. Or at least, that was the tag attached to the cane. The thing is, the tag says it is this model, but it certainly isn’t that model. This twisted oak model is close, but it’s certainly not twisted nor finished like that. It’s probably classified as the natural hardwood crook neck cane. Either way, they’ve got a lot of really cool canes.

It feels a little long for me. I’ll work later tonight on sizing it.

It should be suitable for martial arts work. It is a little heavy, so swinging it for strikes is a little much but certainly managable. There’s a point in the crook that feels thinner than the rest. I’m not sure how well it will stand up to abuse as I feel some flex. Sure some flex is expected, but it does make me wonder. Also the opening of the crook is just wide enough to fit around my neck, so it’s a bit narrower than I’d like. Still, this is a good start to things. Plus I like the look. It has a lot of character.

We’ll see how it goes. If it breaks or winds up not being suitable for martial technique, then I’ll probably seek out a purpose-built cane, such as from Cane Masters.

As well, Callahan’s General Store is neat! We did find boots for Wife and Daugther, which aren’t ideal long-term but should suffice for a good long while. Also bought some “cookies” for the horses. Neat store.

Could Be Oldest’s Favorite Website

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Pickles and Beef Jerky… dot-com.

Looks to have been a short-lived venture into the world of pickles and beef jerky (natch). Yes, Oldest could love this website.

Things I found to be pretty cool:

The guy likes Korean food.

He tried Alton Brown’s beef jerky. I always thought Alton’s approach was cool and have been curious about it, but the whole notion of using furnace air filters always put me off a bit. Just didn’t seem “food grade”. Still doesn’t. But the results seemed to be good.

He knows about Robertsons! You see, not too far north of Austin there is another Robertson’s in Salado, Texas. I always thought it was just the one store, but doing a road trip a couple years back I stumbled upon another Robertson’s up in Oklahoma. Turns out the one in Salado is actually a franchise, and they add a lot of their own products to the mix. I’m glad they do. I don’t like the “true” Roberston’s jerky… it’s hickory smoked and dry as a bone (sometimes brittle!); I know some folks like it this way, and it’s really not that horrible, but it’s just not my preference. However, the Choppin’ Block stuff the Salado folks make? Awesome. Any time I pass the store (conveniently located off Interstate 35 at exit 285) I stop in and pick up a 1 pound bag of the mesquite smoked beef jerky. The taste, texture, everything, just the best. And checking their website this morning to make this blog entry and lo… they have buffalo jerky! I’ll have to try some of that next time I pass through. They’ve got great smoked meats and cheeses too.

OK, I’m hungry now.

Good parenting advice… from Gene Simmons

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I know. You’d want to think that Gene Simmons wouldn’t know a thing about parenting. He does.

Never negotiate with kids. They don’t have life experience, and they don’t have repercussions for bad decisions, they still get fed and housed. And most importantly: I’m bigger! Don’t hit, but don’t pander or give power to kids. They have to know where the power lies. Otherwise, why would they respect it?

Whenever I see poorly behaved children, I look at the parents to see why. Without exception the parents negotiate with the kids, beg and plead with the kids… the parents give the kids the power. If the kid makes a bad decision, there are no serious negative consequences for it. Folks, you reap what you sow. Gene nails it.

If Sophie [Gene’s 17-year-old daughter] came home high or drunk, she’d find her Beverly Hills butt in the middle of the Arizona desert in a work camp. I’m deadly serious. The only jobs kids have are to do well in school, to be charming and polite, and be thankful. That’s it. I’ll house you, protect you, I’ll even give my life for you, and in return, you will behave.

Yup.

It’s always possible the way Sophie and Nick (Gene’s 20-year-old son) behave on the family’s TV show is not how they really are, but I doubt it because that’d be one hell of a charade. Same goes for Ozzy’s kids, Jack and Kelly, on their show. Compare and contrast their behaviors. Sophie and Nick seem to have their heads screwed on pretty well, despite their family situation. So again, see how the kids behave and look at the parents. I think Gene knows what he’s talking about.

Love him or hate him, he’s always interesting. Give the whole article a read. A lot of good stuff in there.

Movie Review – Where The Wild Things Are

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The book Where The Wild Things Are is a favorite in our house. It’s been on our bookshelf for years, and of course with the movie now out the book found new life again. All 10 sentences of it, all beautiful artwork of it.

Daughter wanted to go see the movie, so we piled the family and some of Daughter’s friends into the car and went to go see it. Besides, time at The Alamo Drafthouse is always good. 🙂

Going in to the movie, we didn’t know what to expect. In discussing the movie with other parents, some expressed concern if the movie would be appropriate and/or too scary for the kids. My basic take was that of author Maurice Sendak:

Reporter: “What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?”

Sendak: “I would tell them to go to hell. That’s a question I will not tolerate.”

Reporter: “Because kids can handle it?”

Sendak: “If they can’t handle it, go home. Or wet your pants. Do whatever you like. But it’s not a question that can be answered.”

[…]

Sendak: “I think you’re right. This concentration on kids being scared, as though we as adults can’t be scared. Of course we’re scared. I’m scared of watching a TV show about vampires. I can’t fall asleep. It never stops. We’re grown-ups; we know better, but we’re afraid.”

Reporter: “Why is that important in art?”

Sendak: “Because it’s truth. You don’t want to do something that’s all terrifying. I saw the most horrendous movies that were unfit for child’s eyes. So what? I managed to survive.”

Granted, Sendak sounds rather gruff and irritated at the whole notion, and I’m not feeling that way about it. But I do agree with the basic sentiment. OOOO… the movie might be scary, we can’t let the kids see that! Must shelter our kids from all things negative! Well, if that’s the way you feel about it, don’t go see the movie. If you want to see the movie, then be prepared for whatever the artistic vision of the director and crew happens to be.

The book is not a “shiny happy people holding hands, living happily ever after” sort of story. Consider that Max starts out creating mischief — he is misbehaving and his mother gets angry with him and sends him to bed without supper. The first thing that happens in the book is the kid gets punished for bad behavior. It rolls from there. What is it doing? It’s exploring a child’s technique for coping with anger. And it so happens to have some chaos, some scary monsters, and even that those scary monsters do scary things. Sure the illustrations in the book may not look like something out of Fangoria magazine, but if you do look at their subtle expression and behavior and couple that with the text, especially when Max leaves the island, those monsters are doing some scary ugly things.

I won’t take my kids to see some truly scary slasher film. They’re certainly not ready for that level of suspense/horror type of movie (and given those aren’t my personal cup of tea either, I doubt we’ll be going any time soon anyway). But if there’s a little suspense, a little bit of “negative emotion” to have to experience, why is that so bad? That’s life. Better my children experience and learn about them in an environment where they can learn and be shaped and directed in a good way by their parents (you know, post movie viewing discussion), than for them to always be so sheltered and never really learn and thus become crippled and unable to really cope with the realities of life, warts and all that it brings.

That all said… how was the movie?

I enjoyed it. So did Wife and Children and Friends of Children.

I don’t want to say too much as I don’t want to spoil it, because the movie and the book are not the same. The screenplay is certainly based upon the book and follows it as best as it can. But hey, you’ve got a lot of time to fill from such a small and sparse book, so understandably a lot of artistic license had to be taken. That said, they did keep to the spirit of the storyline, just fleshed it out heavily. I think it was well done. Much of what was done prior to Max going to the island did a great job of setting the stage, down to small little details. The camera work was well done too (you’ll see what I mean); it delivers perspective.

Was it scary? I don’t think so. Yes, there were tense moments. There’s coping with anger, grief, loss, loneliness, sadness. There is a lot of lashing out… rage… just letting one’s emotions out, even if they aren’t politically correct “everyone’s a winner” sort of things. Will this hurt kids? I don’t think so. Granted, some very small children might be freaked out by the monsters. If you wonder if this might be the case, let your child watch the previews online or TV commercials… if the monsters freak the kids out there, don’t bother seeing it. But really, I also think very small children shouldn’t bother seeing the movie. I felt the intent of the movie was deeper than a 4 year old could understand. It’s not some Disney movie where there’s singing and dancing and even an infant can smile and giggle all the bright colors, action, and general superficial happiness. But slightly older kids (even upper-single-digit-ages) should be able to handle it alright. However your kids take it, I do think it’s good to discuss the movie afterwards. What they saw, their take on what the movie was about and the things that went on in the movie. Give your kids a healthy perspective on what they experienced.

Spike Jonze has come a long way as a director. I remember his first music videos and they were always cool. He did a great job here. I liked that the monsters were real (apparently made in Jim Henson’s Creature Shop), and the only CGI was to help with their mouths and facial expressions. It really helped the warmness of the movie because Max and the monsters could touch each other and directly interact.

All in all, I enjoyed it. It explores darker emotions, but they are emotions that we all have. Better to acknowledge them and learn how to deal with them, than to ignore and avoid them.