Kids

Morning randomness

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Went out this morning for a bit. A bunch of little things came up that aren’t worth a whole blog post, but I wanted to put down somewhere. Make one big post. 🙂

More from the snub-nose files

I opted to do a little snubby shopping this morning. I think I’ve settled on something like a Smith & Wesson 640: J-frame (or the like), all steel, chambered in .357 Magnum, fully enclosed hammer. Note that while I would like it to be chambered in .357, I don’t think I’d ever really want to shoot .357 out of it; probably just shoot .38 Special +P. I just think it’d be ideal to have it chambered in .357 so I could shoot it if that was needed; for instance, I needed that extra oomph, maybe that’s the only ammo I could find and would be better than nothing, etc..  The versatility and options from the chambering would be nice, but not required; I would be happy with just .38 +P.

Went to McBrides to see what they have. They had some stuff, but nothing like I wanted. In fact, on the drive home I also stopped into a pawn shop and a sporting goods store. Basically what seems to be carried has at least some aspect of what I don’t want. First, the predominant models are lightweight models, which I’m not sold on wanting. The all-steel models aren’t much heavier (tho I was amazed at just how lightweight that S&W M&P 340 felt, and I did like that U-ramp rear sight) and will be nicer to shoot. Then if they had a steel model it would have an exposed hammer. Or one third thing might be laser grips, which I don’t want. So, nothing in stock that I’d want, either new or used. But I do think that going used would be a way to go, if I can find it. 

Questionable Fund Raising

At many intersections here in Austin you’ll find people begging for money, food, pot (yes, I’ve seen requests for this on their signs), various other things. Oh yeah, they’re also disabled vets, anything helps, God bless. I’m not insensitive to the plight of the homeless, but the vast majority of the folks I see do this as their chosen way of life. I’ve seen them at various intersections around town over the years. If they’re truly someone in need of help, Austin is loaded with help; instead of walking up and down the intersection for a few hours and spending any money they get on booze, they could walk to the help facilities or buy a bus ticket or any manner of things to help themselves. But they don’t, because they don’t want to; they don’t want help. These folks are just freeloaders and parasites and I refuse to support that with my hard-earned money.

So then I see kids out there with signs saying they’re fund raising for their baseball team’s trip, or to help the basketball team reach the finals. Or some such thing. While that seems a more noble cause — and how can you place kids in the same boat — I have to question the tactics. That some adult leader of that group thought that begging for money would be a good way to raise funds, and that the rest of the adult leaders in the group went along with it and said yeah that’s a good idea. What a wonderful thing to teach the children, eh?

Motorcycle Parking Spaces

Do you know what a motorcycle parking space is? The same spaces that cars park in, unless a specific motorcycle parking space is designated (I’ve seen such things).

What isn’t a motorcycle parking space? Sidewalks, crosswalks, the walkway in front of a business door (that’s under the awning and out of the rain, but certainly isn’t a place for vehicles), handicapped walkways. I’m a motorcycle rider myself, but I just cannot stand when other motorcycle riders think that because they’re on a bike, because they’re afraid of getting their bike tipped over or rained on or merely because they’re small enough to fit in some spot (or maybe they’re just arrogant or lazy riders), that they can park wherever they want to. Sorry, no, you can’t.

At the sporting good store, a Moto Guzzi was parked in the handicapped area. You know how those spaces can be set up in the parking lot, with a wide space then lots of paint bordering things, leading into the middle, then through the median as a “cross-walk” so that people with wheelchairs can safely get around. Well, Mr. Moto Guzzi parked his bike right in the median break; no chance of a wheelchair getting through. Why does this bug me? Because I have a nephew in a wheelchair. I’ve had times when we’ve gone out and his van couldn’t be parked in a handicapped space because of people abusing handicapped parking hang-tags. Or in a case like this, the only way for a wheelchair bound person to get around would be to navigate through the parking lot instead of the designated lane. Not a safe and sound thing.

If you ride a motorcycle, don’t be an asshole. Park your bike in a proper parking spot. If you want special motorcycle-only parking, lobby for it.

Conversation I Overheard When I Returned Home

Wife: (Calls Youngest to come downstairs).

Youngest: (Eventually shows up).

Wife: Where were you?

Youngest: I was in my hamper.

Wife: You mean your clothes hamper? You were inside your hamper?

Youngest: Yes. I was sitting in it, clothes piled on top of me.

Wife:  Why were you doing that?

Youngest: I don’t know. It was comfy.

I’m not even going to try to understand it. I’m just going to chalk it up to some random cuteness. I later found out he decorated his hamper to look like a monster, so when you open the lid to put in your clothes it’s as if the monster is eating your clothing. Fair enough. 🙂

Horses

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Yesterday, Daughter got her first ride on a horse.

It was graciously arranged by a buddy of mine. He keeps his horses at Graymar Farms and arranged a session with the owner, Peggy Goff. It wasn’t a true lesson, more of a one-on-one overview and introduction. Daughter got to work with Bruce (a retired show horse), leading him, brushing, tacking, mounting, basic steering (both with the reigns and feet and body “english”… I don’t know all the proper terms). A little walking, a little trotting, weaving cones and riding around. Then some western showmanship stuff with leading, judging, pivoting and walking backwards. Just a basic overview of riding and showing.

Daughter was stoked. She had an ear-to-ear smile all day. Consequently, so did I. 🙂

What will come of this? I don’t know. Certainly Daughter wants to continue. I’ll look into lessons. I’m not saying no, I just have to figure out how to afford it. 

Little girls and horses…. lord, what could I be getting myself into? 😮 😀

I did want to use this as a forum to thank Peggy for her generosity and kindness. She spent about 3 hours of her time with Daughter, and she didn’t have to (on paper it was to only be about an hour). This was all done for free, out of her own kindness and generosity. Peggy’s enthusiasm was off the charts; you can tell she loves what she does and has a true caring about horses. She’s funny, goofy, relaxed, knowledgeable, friendly, approachable. And while I may not know horses, I do know a lot about teaching, especially beginners. Peggy knew her stuff and was just fantastic. I’m not a customer, I have no vested interest here, just speaking as a happy father.

The snake came back

/ hsoi

No, this isn’t about some politician getting re-elected…. 🙂

That Texas Rat Snake that came around the house yesterday? He’s back.

Wife went to take the trash to the bin. She comes back around the corner and there it was starting to cross the walkway. I’m sure it’s the same one, knowing there’s easy food and coming back for more. Trouble is, this time the momma duck was sitting on her nest.

So, no eggs for the snake tonight.

Because he had to go fully across the walkway, I got a better look at him. He’s much larger than I previously thought, in the 4′ to 5′ range, so certainly an adult. I wish I could get a complete picture of him, but he was into the bushes before I had a chance to get the camera. Then he noticed the duck, and opted to just hang out on the other end of the bushes. Once we found him I was able to pull back the bushes and get a better shot of him.

While you can’t tell much about his size, you can see his patterning far better. I’m pretty sure it’s a Texas Rat Snake. Good snake to have around, but certainly gave Wife the heebie-jeebies. 🙂

A couple of the other muscovy ducks came around to eat. It seems these 3 ducks (the two in the picture and the one on the nest) are a group. Always see them together. Don’t know what the relation is, given the 3rd wheel in this relationship, but I don’t really care. All I know is the kids have named every single animal that comes around (I think the snake is Charlie). It does help them keep track of everything, as they never repeat a name.

Wildlife where I live

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One thing I love about the location of my house is the abundance of wildlife. Yes I’m in the city proper, but my house backs up to a greenbelt which is then connected to a few hundred acres of greenbelt, so we get all sorts of critters. Deer, coyote, fox, raccoon, possum, armadillo, and certainly lots of birds and reptiles. We do get lots of interesting lizards and snakes. Our neighbors across the street don’t get nearly what we do, because hot asphalt tends to be quite a barrier to cross. It’s really a nice thing… all the conveniences of the city, but a lot of the joys of the country as well.

A couple blocks from my house is a pond. Technically it’s part of flood control, but it does hold water year-round and has been landscaped into a nice park/pond. As a result, there’s a healthy population of turtles, geese, and ducks (mostly mallard and perhaps black duck, and the past few years Muscovy ducks have shown up). Every Spring the ducks wander the neighborhood, in search of food and nesting grounds. We currently have a nest in the bushes by our front door, which until just a few moments ago had 6 eggs.

I say that because Wife had a few friends visiting. She wanted to show them the nest and when she did she saw a snake eating the eggs. 🙂  The snake had just started swallowing the egg, so of course we had to bring the kids out for some nature study and research – a teachable moment! The snake seems to have eaten just the one egg and that was enough for him. He’s currently lounging in the bushes, getting some sun and digesting his feast.

Did some Googling and we think he’s a Texas Rat Snake, which are apparently quite common in the Austin area. This one was about 3.5′ long, so he’s still fairly young. The ladies visiting Wife wanted me to kill it, but I’m glad I didn’t. He’s not hurting anything and he’s not venomous. So he’s eating a duck egg… eh, he’s gotta eat something, right? Plus if he is in fact a Texas Rat Snake, he’s a good thing to have around in terms of keeping any rodents away. Of course, I think this guy was around more for the eggs than rodents. But still, good guy to have around, even if he does give Wife the willies. 🙂

BTW, if you click and look at the larger images you’ll see some black and white things all over the leaves of the bushes. Does anyone know what those are? I’ve been spraying the bushes for bugs but these seem to keep coming back and spreading. *sigh* I could just take them to the local nursery, but I haven’t been able to do that yet. If you know, please comment.

Love your children? Teach them.

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David Codrea at the National Gun Rights Examiner has an article titled “Love your children? Teach them how to safely handle guns.” The point of the article is to say that the solution of avoiding guns, hoping they disappear, and keeping yourself and your children ignorant about guns tends to be what leads to tragedy.  Instead, the better solution is to teach your children how to handle a gun, the safety rules, how the gun works, and so on “[a]nd if you’re incapable of doing any of these things, you’re being negligent on a basic parental responsibility and need to get yourself trained without delay.”

I don’t disagree with Mr. Codrea’s basic premise, but I do disagree with how he presents his case and what he specifically asserts is the sole solution to the problem. He is correct in saying “we are better prepared to deal with things–all things–if we have become educated about them.” But what level of education we undertake for ourselves and our children is up to you. I do believe there are different levels of “gun knowledge” that one can have.

I believe the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program is the bare minimum knowledge that all people should have regarding guns. “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.” While aimed at children, it’s sound reasoning for everyone as a bare minimum of knowledge. This requires no gun handling, yet aims and succeeds at keeping people safe around guns. Whether you have a gun in your home or not, your children have potential to come across a gun. 

The next step up from this would be something like the NRA’s Home Firearm Safety Course. This is a gun-handling but non-shooting class that aims to educate about the basic rules of gun safety, different types of firearms, parts, actions, how they work…. and how to safely unload and store them. This is a good course for people that maybe inherited a large collection of firearms from grandpa, don’t shoot, but want to ensure safe storage of the firearms. This is good for school administrators or other people that may be around children and firearms, so they can know how to identify and render a firearm safe, but don’t need to know how to shoot.

Continuing up the ladder, the NRA’s First Steps courses or Basic courses in Pistol, Rifle, and/or Shotgun go a step further and actually teach you how to shoot. And there are certainly vast training opportunities out there for people that wish to go even further in their gun handling skills.

What level of knowledge you care to have is up to you. You can graduate from high school, undergrad, graduate, get a Ph.D., get multiple degrees. The level of education one undertakes regarding firearms is no different than the level of education one cares to pursue in anything in life. Without question, the more you know the more you can do, and ignorance will serve you the worst.

So Mr. Codrea, while we agree that ignorance is the worst policy, we’ll have to disagree on to what extent one must be educated. To know Col. Cooper’s rules is great if you’re going to handle a gun, but some do choose to never handle a gun and who am I or you to tell them they’re wrong in their choice? There’s still things folks can know that can keep them and their children safe, without having to compromise their stance or level of comfort regarding firearms. Not everyone likes to dive into the pool head-first… some people like to dip a toe in to check out the water. I figure as long as folks are willing to get even a little wet, that’s OK.

Storage for a self-defense handgun

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James R. Rummel has an entry about how to store a handgun kept for self-defense.  This actually started as a comment on his blog but got long enough I thought it warranted its own blog entry.

Overall I agree with James:

  • Concealed carry is a great option as it always keeps the handgun on hand, ready, and should keep anyone else away from it.
  • Home-security is far more than just “have a gun”. Upgrading your locks, frames, lights, other sorts of barriers to prevent or delay entry. All good things.
  • There is no perfect storage solution; they all have trade-offs.
  • Trigger locks are bad.

But I disagree with what appears to be his recommended choice of storage: either in a box under lock and key, or using a cable lock.

Continue reading →

Play date!

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I actually dislike the term “play date”, but figure it’s amusing for a title.

TXGunGeek organized a play day. It was him, some of his friends, commenter Chimera was there, doc was there (it was a pleasure to meet you!), Barbie no-showed on us. But to me, the coolest part was TXGunGeek said it was cool if I brought my kids so Daughter came out with me.

Everyone got unpacked and there was just a smorgasbord of guns on the table. Everyone checking everyone else’s gear out, “Hey can I try that?” “Only if I can try that!”. It was quite cool. But, allow me to focus on My Little Girl for a bit, since that was the highlight of my day. 🙂

The main thing she was looking forward to was shooting the Buck Mark. A few days ago at house we did a little dry fire. She’s never fired a handgun before so we went over things like grip and stance, how the Buck Mark operates, etc..  She already knows about things like sight picture and trigger control, but we touched on those again as well. So once we got to the range and we could go hot, we shot steel. At the range there’s a nice set of steel targets, from 6″ and 8″ circles to larger rectangles and pepper poppers. Daughter had a blast. She liked shooting the Buck Mark. She liked the sound of lead hitting steel. She was doing really well. She would shoot a magazine then rest, since the gun would be heavy held out at arms length. As we went along I refined her trigger control so she would ride the trigger and properly reset it. Then working on regaining sight picture and shooting again as soon as she regained the sight picture. I think she really enjoyed that, being able to shoot a bit faster that she was before. I can’t disagree… there’s something satisfying about shooting fast and hearing all that “ping” on the steel.

Daughter also got to shoot a few other things. Chimera had a Henry lever-action .22, which Daughter really got a kick out of. I think she liked the lever-action. TXGunGeek had a .22 conversion kit for his AR and while the rifle was very heavy (you can see my right hand supporting the front), Daughter liked to shoot it.

Daughter was nothing but big smiles all morning long. She was shooting well, got to try some new (to her) and different guns. I’m a proud Daddy. 🙂

As for me, again I gotta say how much I like that Buck Mark. It is so much fun to shoot. 

The big thing of the day was a course TXGunGeek set up. Started off with a long gun (whatever you wanted to shoot, Chimera even tried it with his Henry lever-action), engage cardboard, shoot some clay pigeons, more cardboard, move, transition to side-arm, steel, cardboard, move, more cardboard, various distances, precise shooting. A fun little course.

Here I am, engaging the clays and missing because I was figuring out exactly how much holdover I needed:

And here I am after the transition to the XD.

We wrapped up just as it started to rain on us. Good timing. The weather was very nice: partly cloudy, a cool breeze, moderate temps. Just a great day for shooting.

I asked Daughter what she enjoyed: the Buck Mark. 🙂  I asked her what she learned: how to shoot a handgun, and a bit more about things like sight picture and trigger control.

I asked myself what I learned: it reinforced my need to make an effort to back off on speed and jack up accuracy. Not so slow that it’s akin to bullseye shooting, but well…. after I got home I was thinking that next time I’m shooting the Buck Mark on the steel range the thing to have in my head is “all hits”, that all 10 rounds in the magazine must go “ping”. That will require slowing down a bit, being 100% sure of sight picture before firing, keeping my eyes glued to that front sight.  I also learned I need to spend more time with my AR (and that I want an Aimpoint). What did I enjoy? Having a great time with my Daugther, bonding, teaching her things, creating fond memories. That was my highlight. 🙂

I want to thank TXGunGeek for setting this up and inviting me out to it, and for allowing my daughter to come along as well. Thanx to Chimera for letting us shoot his Henry (man, I want one of those now!). Doc, it was great to meet you! Everyone else, it was good to meet you too and I’m sure we’ll see each other again.

A good day. Now, off to clean some guns.

Updated: Gotta brag on my little girl a bit more. In the classroom at the range there’s a subtle but intentional thing done. I don’t want to say what it is because it’s better when students discover it on their own. It took me a few visits before I noticed it, then it was explained to me. This was daugther’s first time in the classroom and she noticed it immediately. I was tickled. 🙂

Updated 2: TXGunGeek has his write-up on the day.

Updated 3: Docbot finally wrote up!

Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.

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I became an Eddie Eagle volunteer and gave my first presentation last night. Went over fairly well, for a first time. I think it’s a great program that strives to be fun but teach a serious message. Afterwards I heard from various parents that agreed: even if you are anti-gun, it makes sense to teach your children to “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.” At the barest of minimums that helps you keep your child safe if they ever encounter a gun. We teach our children so many other things about being safe but this one tends to be avoided for whatever reason. With a program like Eddie Eagle, there’s no reason not to provide it and teach that simple mantra/message to your children:

As for the program itself, I used the “assembly format” which I think works fairly well. It aims to be fun, keeps the kids interested, but it doesn’t bog down with anything or even let the fun and silliness get in the way of the serious message of “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.”  and additional messages of respect (for always following all safety rules) and responsibility (for yourself). It uses various things to help imprint the message: rhymes, repetition, some physical movements (watch the video, you’ll see the “Eddie Shuffle”), repetition, a few scenarios to play out, repeating the 4 steps numerous times, “Stop. Don’t touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult.” You get the idea. 🙂  It’s very well developed, from an educator standpoint.

You can hate guns to your dying day. But if you love your children, be they your own kids or just kids in your care, please take the time to teach them about Eddie Eagle. Thirty minutes of discussion could save you from a life of heartache.