Life

Such a fine time was had

/ hsoi

I had a wonderful time last night.

Due to typing in the same programming circles so many years ago (over a decade?), I met a gentleman named Rainer Brockerhoff. We met in person some long time ago at an Apple WorldWide Developer Conference event, have seen each other at various WWDC’s over the years, and have certainly stayed in touch due to the magic of modern technology.

But the past week was a treat. You see, Rainer and his wife often travel together and so this time the plan was to come to WWDC then visit Texas. Last week they came to Austin for a bit and while my schedule was busy I made time to see them for lunch because I had no idea when another such opportunity would come — especially to finally meet his wife after all these years. Folks, she’s a charming and lovely woman and my only regret was that my Wife didn’t get a chance to meet her.

Well, life works out in fun ways sometimes. It seems the Texas heat is far too oppressive and it’s not making for an enjoyable trip, so they’re going to head home early. Due to the way things worked out, they were able to come back to Austin last night. This tells you what a great wife I have because she took it all in stride to get the house in order and prepare a nice dinner for a couple of people she’s never met before. (thank you, honey!). Rainer and his wife came over, we shared dinner and many wonderful stories. Rainer taught the children how to make some paper cutouts (he’s quite good). We all got to drool over his new iPad. Quite a wonderful time, and I’m so happy that our wives got to meet each other.

Life is full of fantastic opportunities, and sometimes it’s best when you just roll with what you’re given. 🙂

Sweet double standards

/ hsoi

So I get my City of Austin Utilities bill in the mail. It contains some filers talking about the city effort encouraging people to garden and build habitats in a manner that encourages wildlife.

Cool! That’s one thing I love about where I live, as there’s lots of wildlife. We get deer, ducks, foxes, armadillos, raccoons, possums, mockingbirds, cardinals, blue jays, Carolina wrens, tufted titmouses, all other manner of birds, rat snakes, toads, various other reptiles, insects, butterflies… I mean, you name it. It’s quite a variety of fauna around here. And I admit, the fact Austin isn’t a concrete jungle is one reason I love it.

So I read more into the city’s program.

Hrm.

It talks about wanting to encourage butterflies, birds, frogs, salamanders and the like. But never is mention made of deer, ducks, foxes, armadillos, raccoons, snakes, and so on. In fact, if you look at the city ordinances and polices, it’s got a good many things on the books specifically to discourage that sort of wildlife.

So the City of Austin doesn’t really want to encourage wildlife, just certain kinds of wildlife. Furthermore, the city wants to discourage the uh… undesirable wildlife.

It’s always amusing (and sad) when all the fuckin’ liberals scream about how its wrong to discriminate, yet they are some of the worst offenders of the very same.

A bunch of random pictures

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I’ve been wanting to post a bunch of pictures for a while now. So hey…. let’s just put them all up in a single big post.

All pictures can be clicked upon to see larger versions.

Ducks

A few shots of the various neighborhood ducks. The pictures of the ducklings are actually a few weeks old; the ducklings are all much bigger now, but still just have the downy yellow feathers.

Here’s the one mallard hen and her ducklings:

The mallard ducklings are presently going through an awkward phase, where their legs are much longer compared to the rest of their bodies. It’s rather amusing.

One of the muscovy duck hens and her badelynge:

Another muscovy and her group.

That particular one… when the USDA people came to thin the flock, they took 7 of her ducklings (she had 12, lost one somehow, and now only 4 remain). My understanding is they weren’t supposed to take ducklings….

Now with the muscovy population so drastically reduced, we’ve had more not-muscovy ducks coming around. Just yesterday a new couple showed up:

Unfortunately, that’s the best picture I could get of them. They’re very skittish and constantly moving around. We’re guessing by their behavior that the brown/white one is male and the black/white one is female, tho the black/white one is slightly larger. What gets me is I’ve never seen a duck like the black/white one. The picture does not do her justice. The feathers are gorgeous. Lots of subtle coloring. Likely some sort of mallard hybrid. I do wonder exactly what it is, but despite the beautiful plumage I know it’s not a Norwegian Blue.

Texas DPS Firearms Range

For the range qualification portion of the CHL Instructor course, they held it at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Firearms Range in Florence, Texas. It was a pretty nice facility. Here’s some pictures of the pistol range that we used.

Here’s a shot of the left part of the range:

And here’s the right:

There are 60 firing positions, 6 groups of 10.  The first 10 yards or so have that rubbery surface, so it’s solid but there’s some cushion; very nice if you have to be there training all day. Then you can see it’s grass with concrete sidewalks that space out other ranges (e.g. 15 yards, 25 yards). All 60 positions have target frames that can be flipped sideways so you can’t see them, and exposed for set amounts of time. The chief range officer had a remote control and a headset with microphone for giving the range commands; the speakers were also remote speakers placed on the ground every so often behind us. That setup worked quite well.

Here’s a shot of the right side, from back at the parking lot:

There’s a small building to the left, the edge of which you can see. That’s the bathrooms, water fountains, etc..

There were other ranges too, for rifle. A skeet range was also there. One thing we got a kick out of? We saw a deer feeder, and when we first arrived in the morning numerous does came out to feed. I did see some BBQ pits up in the pavilion. I guess they have some fun during the winter. *grin*

Dawson Precision

After the CHL shooting test, I visited Dawson Precision.

Now if you really want to see some pictures of their facility, check out their Facebook page.

But one thing I thought was really cool? Their range/testing room.

You see, it’s a wonderful indoor room. It has a fully capable work bench:

This way when they test out a gun, if it needs a tweak they can tweak it right there. Very nice, well thought out. The shelves on the left hold a host of different ammunition, which is all reloaded on a bunch of Dillon Precision 1050’s that are in the room off to the right. Again, all for testing the guns.

See that chair in the bottom-left corner?

That chair lets you sit at this bench:

It’s a bench. There’s a good rest on it. That big contraption on the wall? It’s a brass catcher. There’s a bucket at the bottom of it. Simple enough, you make sure a fresh empty bucket is placed at the bottom before you test. You test, then once completed you empty the bucket. Makes recycling and sorting the cases really easy. It’s really well put together.

Now, you see that window to the left? Well, if you look closely you’ll see there’s a door and hinges along the top edge. Normally it’s closed. But with the press of a button it raises up and opens out to this:

And from your air-conditioned benchrest, you can shoot all that steel. All your brass is caught. If the gun needs work, you just visit the workbench right behind you. If the steel needs to be reset (some are LaRue resetting targets), then there’s a cord/handle just above you that makes it easy to do right from the comfort of the room.

Folks…. this is awesome. 🙂

Now remember I mentioned that the front sight they installed was different from the one I already had?

Take a look:

On the left is the sight that was installed by Springer Precision. I’m not 100% sure which one it is. On the Springer Precision website work order it just says “Dawson Precision Fixed Sight SET (.100 fiber optic front) target rear”.

On the right is the one that Dawson directly sold me and installed. It is the .205 tall x .100 wide Match (used with DP Fixed Rear), item number 021-019.

I pulled out the calipers and measured. Same width, same height, just different bases. I’ll have to ask about that. I ought to be able to shoot the gun with the new sights soon.

A lovely morning

/ hsoi

Finally slept in this morning (you know, got up at 5 AM…. yes, that’s sleeping in for me). After the past week of waking up quite early, it was nice to get back to a normal sleep schedule.

Everyone else was asleep, but Daughter woke up. We hung out in my office, listened to music. Introduced her to UFO, Uriah Heep, Led Zeppelin, and more Lenny Kravitz. It’s showing what music was like before Auto-Tune (which she appreciates).

Go downstairs. Look out front and see one muscovy mother and her 4 growing ducklings. Put out some black-oil sunflower seeds for them.

Look out the back of the house. I see one of the local nesting cardinals catching a bug just outside the back door. His mate is with him and she’s flittering her wings and he’s offering her the bug. I watch their little ritual.

Then I look up from them and see one of the does in the greenbelt eating. She moves off a bit and then I see what we’ve been expecting to see — her fawn. We noticed this doe had full teets, so there had to be a baby somewhere; finally got to see it this morning white spots and all. Another doe was also nearby. There’s a third doe that comes around, much smaller than the other two. She’ll probably be by later.

Just something beautiful about the morning. 🙂

Desert Deuce Surplus

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Never heard of Desert Deuce Surplus before, but I wanted to order a couple of pairs of Tru-Spec 24/7 shorts and Desert Deuce came up as a place with them in stock. Submitted an order.

Well, a week went by and I hadn’t received any sort of information about the handling of my order, other than it was received and the money was taken. I phoned, left a message, 24 hours and no callback. I phoned again, got someone on the phone. She looked up my order and was obviously puzzled as to why my order hadn’t been fulfilled. She took my phone number and said she’d call back in 10 minutes. I went about my business and about 30 minutes later she calls back saying my order was going out right now.

So I’m waiting for my order to arrive. It seems the lack of fulfillment was an oversight and I was happy to see it promptly dealt with. We’ll see how things go once the order gets here. But so far, well…. while I’m not thrilled at what went down, I’m willing to let it slide and I’d consider ordering from them again. If nothing else, they’ve got an interesting selection of products — including parts for M35 and 5 ton military trucks!

Updated: The package arrived. Contained 100′ of 550 paracord and the Tru-Spec shorts.

The rope is… well… paracord. Useful stuff.

As for the shorts, I’m pleased! They are pretty much the same as the Tru-Spec 24/7 pants that I like so much, except in shorts form. I haven’t had a chance to pull out the shorts and the pants to side-by-side compare, but I did notice one difference: the side leg pockets. On the pants, the rear bottom corner is pleated (is that the right term?) such that when you have a lot of cargo in the pocket the pocket expands. Thus, the pocket can be VERY roomy. Sometimes that’s good (e.g. picking up lots of range brass), but sometimes it’s annoying because of how the gear can flop on your leg. On the shorts, that corner of the pocket is sewn to the leg so there isn’t as much expansion in the pocket. I think for shorts that’s a good thing.

Anyway, I’m pleased with the shorts!

As for Desert Deuce, they did what they said they would. Again, I didn’t get the best first impression of them, but they made things right and did so promptly. I wouldn’t be against using them again.

Rules for Instructors? Or just good rules for life?

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I still don’t know if I’m going to study Aikido, but I am doing a lot of research on the topic. I came across these “13 Rules for Aikido Instructors” (yes I know, they only list 12). What I found interesting was, they weren’t just good rules for Aikido instructors, but generally were good humble rules for life. You may have to modify the wording slightly (e.g. #3 becomes simply “do not criticize”), but it’s pretty solid.

I opted to reprint them here, with some minor formatting changes. They are things I want to remember for myself.

Continue reading →

Coda

/ hsoi

Today was an emotional shithouse.

The whole duck thing? Sure, I know they’re just ducks. But as the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I knew I had some attachment to them (I knew the kids had a heavy attachment to them), but I guess I had more than I thought. Imagine someone walking into your home and taking your family pets away. I doubt you’d find that an enjoyable experience. I keep finding myself going to the front window, looking out on the lawn expecting to see the ducks there but now realizing there aren’t any. Seeing them throughout the day brought such joy to us; looking out the empty window just brings sadness. Feelings of betrayal, anger, sadness… on the one hand I feel kinda silly for feeling this way, but I didn’t ask to feel this way… it’s just how things are and I accept my feelings.

Then I try to get work done and the code rewrite I attempted just didn’t pan out; in fact, while on paper it should have been better, in reality it turned out exponentially worse (performance was abysmal). That’s two days of work down the tubes, but such is R&D. I had such high hopes. Alas.

But while most of the day went wrong, towards the end it got better.

The neighbor that I know called for the duck removal? He came by the house to check on the boys. He apologized for what he did. I wasn’t there, but Wife tells me that she saw genuine remorse in his eyes. I have to give him a lot of respect for coming by like he did. That took a lot of guts. While it doesn’t fix things, we’re all human, we all make mistakes, and if we don’t learn to forgive then well… what sort of person are we?

Then I capped off the day with a glass of 2007 Grape Creek Merlot and a Rocky Patel 1990 petit corona cigar. Sat with Wife in the backyard and watched the kiddos having a blast with their squirt guns and running through the slip and slide. Two does wandered into the greenbelt for their evening meal. We watched them, they watched us for quite a while. It was most peaceful and satisfying.

Of ducks and crying children

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

So we have a large population of muscovy ducks in our neighborhood.

There are some neighbors that don’t like that reality. They’ve contacted the neighborhood management association to see what can be done about it. Word was they were going to get a group out here to trap some of the ducks and relocate them to farm ponds.

My children were not happy. Admittedly, I’m not thrilled with it either.

Remember that one mother duck that was eaten a couple of weeks ago? We relocated 6 of her viable eggs to another mother across the way. Those eggs hatched just yesterday. It was a joyous event!

This morning I go out to refresh the water dish, as 2 mallard drakes were in the yard. I see the mother across the way emerge and 9 little ducklings behind her. I walk to the edge of my yard to get a better look and then I see a man standing in a neighbor’s driveway watching the ducks. I keep an eye on him.

I clean up my yard a bit, go to throw some things away. The guy engages me in conversation. I see by his hat and shirt he’s with the USDA. He’s been out here for the past 2 weeks counting and observing. And this morning, they’re trapping.

Daughter and Wife are out of the house, but Oldest and Youngest got to observe what was going on. Their first tip-off? One of the hens with 5 ducklings is nowhere to be seen, but her 5 ducklings are all huddled together alone and peeping. They went looking, then saw the men with nets chasing down the ducks.

The wailing of broken-hearted children commenced. I didn’t stop it. I let the men hear it, I let the neighbors I know in part responsible for this hear it.

We asked the men if we could look at the ducks they had captured to see if the one mother was in there. We couldn’t tell given the nature of the cages. They had captured some other babies too, but we don’t know which or whom. We tried to get the men to take the 5 orphans with them because likely the mother was in their truck, but they wouldn’t engage us in conversation; one wouldn’t even look me in the eye. Nice, but I can’t blame them… they’re just doing their job and I was hitting them with an emotional attack.

I managed to capture the 5 orphans. We’re going to take them to the Austin Wildlife Rescue.

Talking with another neighbor, he mentioned wanting to catch the one mother with the 9 ducklings and relocate her to a farm pond. I wondered why, no response.

Yes, I know and even the children know the realities of it all. We’ve explained it to them, helped them understand the practical reasons for why this has to happen. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. These ducks have a lot of personality and yes, even I’ve grown attached. Someone coming along and taking them away, it hurts. Again, we understand the realities of it all, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less, especially for the kiddos.

Just furthers our desire to move to the country.

Woke up in a fright

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

You know what you don’t want to hear in the middle of the night?

Your children letting out panicked, blood-curdling screams.

*sigh*

Kiddos were “camping out”, sleeping in sleeping bags in the living room (it’s just something they like to do, and it’s harmless). Daughter reports that Oldest started to fidget and itch. He was groggy and not sure what was going on, but something was bugging him. He wanders into our room, wakes up Wife, and asks if she could look at his neck, if she might see anything.

She sure did.

A scorpion.

It was a striped bark scorpion, very common in Texas. We get them inside the house on occasion. Seems the scorpion was taking a midnight stroll across Oldest’s body. Once everyone noticed what it was, the screams and cries went out. Sure freaked me out to be woken up in that manner.

There’s a small welt on Oldest’s neck, another on his chest, and one on his hand. He’s doing OK, it’s just annoying him at this point. His siblings both got bad sunburns last weekend, he just got some light scorpion stings. Everyone’s happy. 😉