Life

Easing them into life

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

My friend Ron stopped feeding one of his sons today.

I think it’s a great idea.

I hadn’t thought about doing this specific thing, but I’m going to add it to my agenda for my own kids. I have been allowing Oldest to make more of his own choices mistakes, which is good. He’s got enough knowledge and experience in his head to be given some free reign and jurisdiction over himself. We still guide him and sometimes we have to make the decision for him, but in the end the consequences (good and bad) are his to receive, and any mistakes are his to deal with.

I have felt that when 16 years old comes around, we won’t buy any of the kids a car. If they want a car, they pay for it. I might go in half with them, we’ll have to see how prices are. But things like gas, insurance, money for whatever fun they want to have… they have to get that on their own. Basically, if you want things in life, you gotta work for it and earn it. It’s how life is (or at least, is supposed to be), so get used to it.

Also once they can start to drive I want them to take at least one class at the local community college to get used to how they are. Again, easing them into the real world.

Anyway, thanx for the idea Ron. Good one.

A simple pleasure

/ hsoi

One thing I love about being home so much (side-benefit of the work-at-home situation) is my wife’s cooking.

Not just eating it and eating it 2-3 times a day, but smelling it.

I’ll be sequestered in my office. I’ll be deeply buried in code or debugging or some other software development joy. Then it hits me. Some smell… it has crept its way through the house. It might be the smell of garlic and onions sautéing. It might be bread baking. It might be the wonderful smell of bacon frying. Whatever it is, it’s always a wonderful smell. It’s always a pleasant surprise when it hits. Sometimes I’ll head down to the kitchen to see what’s cooking, other times I’ll just savor the aromas from afar and wait to see what else floats my way so I can try to figure out what she’s up to. 

The printer is in my office. I’ll hear it kick in without my initiation, so I know it’s Mrs. Hsoi printing out a recipe she found. I do my best to avoid looking at the printout. I don’t want to know. I don’t want the surprise to be ruined. Let her cook. Let the clues waft my way. The simple please of deciphering the magic she’s performing in the kitchen.

I am a fortunate man. 🙂

Updated: You know how I know my wife reads my blog? I post this. I go get in the shower. I come out of the shower and smell… bacon. Sweet sweet thick cut smoky fatty bacon. She received the above subtle hint.

My wife is awesome.

Ah, kids

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

The neighbor kids are over, playing with my kids. The joys of Spring Break and nothing for them to do all day, eh?

They all have their Nerf guns out. In the hallway. Outside my office. Setting up barricades. Plotting strategy. Choosing teams.

I hear them talking about each other’s Nerf blaster.

“How much capacity does yours have?”

“A lot.”

Sounds of “rack, click, pop” as suction cup darts go whizzing about, sticking to the walls and windows.

I’m all tempted to go down and start to show them some tactics, but I know it’ll be instantly uncool for me to do so. 😉

 

BTW, today’s Nerf blasters are pretty awesome.

 

Update: I come downstairs. The kids are now outside playing, but evidence of their past exploits remain. Three guesses whose “compound” this was.

Emergency, by Neil Strauss

/ hsoi

My buddy Ron has his review of the new Neil Strauss book, Emergency, up on his blog.

After reading the review, I’m not sure I’ll buy the book. It seems it’s not what I expected it to be (tho I did suspect it might be the way that it went). It’s the sort of thing where I’m not going to blindly order from Amazon, but instead I’ll try to find it at a local bookstore and flip through before I decide. Still, it’s cool that he wrote the book that he did.

The free exchange of ideas

/ hsoi

…. so long as we approve. (h/t to SayUncle).

…but that the school was unwilling to allow any pro gun rights speaker to come speak to her class, out of concern for how the parents would react.

Did you ever think parents might react negatively to presenting lop-sided arguments? to providing anything less than an actual education to their children? This of course assumes the parents spending their money to send the children to this school care about such things.

One promising thing is the exchange with the teacher… the teacher seems to understand the value of things, and it sounds like the students might actually be thinking — more than can be said for the school administrators. Hopefully the kids will learn a little extra from the whole experience… a “teachable moment” if you will.

Me and my Leatherman

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

What can I say. I like tools. I especially like useful tools.

One of my favorite useful tools? My Leatherman Wave.

Sure I had a pocket knife when I was a kid; in fact, I had a bunch of different pocket knives. You’re a young boy. You’re in Scouts. You get your Whittlin’ Chip. You get your Tote N’ Chip. You have knives (and work with other things too like axes and saws). You learn how to be responsible in the use of these tools and how to use them correctly and effectively. It’s just what you do as a kid. 🙂

I’ve also had various other knives, and sure they’re great and fun, but they’re just not always useful and handy. Tools are really most useful when they’re available to you at the point in time you need them. So you need to cut something? If you can’t get at your knife, what good is it?

So when I finally was able to get a good knife, the first thing I looked for was the ability to get the knife into my hand and the blade in a position where I can cut. Even better is if I can do this one-handed, and even better, if I don’t have to look to do it.. There are certainly lots of knives out there that do this (I like Spyderco Delica‘s too). This is one great thing about the Wave. When it was introduced, most Leatherman tools had the blades on the inside, meaning you had to open up the whole tool just to get at the blade, then close everything up to be able to use the blade. This was not handy at all. Leatherman realized this and created the Wave with the blades on the outside of the tool (seen at right). Now you can pull out the Leatherman from your pocket or sheath, and the blades are right there. You can place your thumb in the hole on the blade and with one hand open and lock the blade and off you can use it. One subtle but important thing Leatherman did was understand the importance of the sense of touch. There are 4 blades on the Wave, 2 blades are within easy deployment by a right-handed person. But when the Wave is in your hand and you can’t see what you’re doing, you can feel! There’s a small bumpy ridge on the back of the serrated blade (bumps, serrated, get it?), so you can feel for this with your thumb… if you feel the bumps, you’re in position to deploy the serrated blade; feel smooth, the straight blade. So this was a key reason in my choice of the Wave back when I bought it. These days it seems most of Leatherman’s full-sized multitools offer the blades on the outside, so that’s good to see.

The other reason for choosing this over a traditional pocket knife? More tools! Well, that and locking blades (most traditional pocket knives don’t have locking blades… something you appreciate the first time something slides and a blade closes or nearly closes on your fingers). It’s nice to have tools. There are countless times I have used the pliers, wire cutters, screwdrivers, bottle opener, can opener, ruler, scissors… yes, I’ve used just about all of it. But this is me and what’s right for me. What’s cool is there are many different combinations and variations out there. For instance, check out the Leatherman Crunch and it’s different pliers. The pliers have probably been one of the best things… you don’t realize how much you can actually enjoy having them handy until well… you’ve got a set always handy. Another thing that was novel about the Wave when it was introduced was that when the pliers were in use, the handles were smooth and rounded, which made it very comfortable on your palms, especially if you have to grip hard; Leatherman’s with pliers at that time didn’t have this and it wasn’t enjoyable to use the pliers.

There is only one problem with the Wave. It lacks tweezers. The first Leatherman I actually owned was a Micra. I received it as a Father’s Day present long ago because it was small and had a good pair of scissors. Why scissors? Well, my children were very small at the time, but able to sit up and drink from beverages with straws… which were always too long… which would always cause drinking problems…. so I wished I could just trim the straws down to size for the kids. And lo, I was given the gift of the Micra. I will say, the scissors are better than the Wave’s, but the Wave’s are sufficient for most needs. The real bonus with the Micra, again, is the tweezers. And I still carry my Micra, on my keychain. No reason not to. Splinters happen and need to be removed.

Keep your Leatherman handy. In your pocket, on your belt, in your bag, whatever works for you. Useful tools, on hand when needed. Leatherman ranks high on my must-have list.

Why She Carries

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Syd wrote a wonderful piece titled “I Don’t Carry A Gun.” Kellene wrote a, I guess you could call it a companion piece, titled “Why This Woman Carries A Firearm.”

We live in a society that strives to put women and men on equal footing, and there’s certainly a lot of merit in that as there are many situations and context where gender and gender-based differences don’t matter. On the flip side, we cannot ignore that there are differences between men and women. When it comes to matters of self-protection, many things are gender-neutral, but there’s no question some things are gender-specific. Kellene articulates some of these quite well. I especially love her final reason:

I carry a firearm because as a woman I have the privilege of giving life.  That’s right.  I don’t carry a gun to take life, but to ensure that it’s fully given to those who choose live.  


Children and shoes

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Oldest’s shoes died a quiet death this past weekend. A little duct tape was used to keep them in play for a bit longer, but there was no question they were gone. Plus he’s growing and his toes were scrunching, so without question he needed new shoes. Darn these kids… they keep growing for some reason. 🙂

Oldest wanted some Dad time, so I took him shopping. Had lunch at Carl’s Jr. (they just opened here in Austin, tho I’ve been to them before when visiting California… it’s a burger, but it’s novel for the kids), then off we went for shoes.

Shoe Carnival? Nothing. Payless? Nothing. Wal-Mart? Nothing. Target? Nothing. JC Penny’s? Nothing. Then we hiked it across town to the Mall. Finish Line? Nope. Sketchers? Nope. Journey’s? No. Vans? Nope. Foot Locker? No. There’s a store or two that I’m forgetting, but they were “no” as well. Why so many failures? Well, some were just lack of selection… I tell my wife that Payless is great for women, and it is, but that’s all. Also Oldest’s feet seem to be at a stage where he’s maybe youth size maybe adult size (size 6), but either way there isn’t always enough available in his size. So when we can find a store that’s even plausable, then there’s nothing he likes.

Me: So what do you think?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: Well, did you see anything you liked?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: Did you see anything you didn’t like?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: *sigh*  Well, you said that pair you maybe liked. So… what did you like about it?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: *sigh* The color? The style? The fit?

Oldest: I don’t know.

Me: *sigh*

And so on… the conversation went. Yes… those teenage years are upon me. I suppose this is my penance  for my teenage years, right? Karma’s a bitch, man. 😉

So I explained to Oldest about guiding through decisions. How you gather information. If you liked this, what did you like about it? color, style, fit, etc.. If you didn’t like this, why didn’t you like it? Again, take a catalog of it. Make an explicit bit of work to figure that out. Tally it up. Eventually, if you pay attention to what you’re doing, you’ll figure it out.  I kept working with him to help him figure things out, to help him sort it out, but letting him ultimately make the choices.

And so, eventually we get to Champs. We stood outside. Oldest was obviously tired and frustrated and wanting to give up in all of this. But I just stood there, reminding him that his current shoes were dead and giving up wasn’t going to solve anything… he’d just have to be back out again, so might as well deal with it now instead of prolonging the pain. We go into Champ’s, and the first few he tried he didn’t like. But we talked, he seemed to catch on to the decision making process. I might ask a question, have him compare to a prior shoe he tried. He’d tell me this felt better or worse, he didn’t like the color on this one, or whatever… so there was a breakthrough here, which made me happy. And eventually he found something. And lo, it was comfortable. It wasn’t too gaudy. Could be something casual but he could even wear them to church. They were in his size, good construction and fit. We had a winner.

Finally. 🙂

And Mom seems happy with the choice too. So, Oldest seems happy. Mom is happy. I got to have some time with my son. I got to teach him about a few things, and he seemed to catch on. So, there’s hope!

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.