Oh Cabela’s.
You are so evil.
I go in just to buy some dry boxes.
I walk out with a lot more than that. Granted, most were things I eventually needed anyways, but still…. 🙂
Me
Dump Doggett
And so… November 2010 draws closer.
So what to do… what to do… apart from making some popcorn and watching the festivities. 😉
I will say, living in the 25th Congressional District of Texas, that means my U.S. Representative is Lloyd Doggett.
He’s got to go. Or better said through the phrase gaining in popularity ’round these parts:
Dump Doggett
As of now, it appears that Dr. Donna Campbell is going to get my vote. Yeah, I’d prefer to vote for the Libertarian candidate, but this time around I’m finding myself having to vote differently. Normally I choose to vote for the person I feel is best for the job (regardless of party affiliation). I don’t like voting for “who sucks less” or the “lesser evil”, nor do I feel voting for “someone with no chance of winning” is throwing my vote away. But this time around, I feel the more important thing is that Washington needs a serious purge (enema?). Doggett has demonstrated time and time again that he’s… well let’s just be frank about it… he’s an elitist that has forgotten how to do the job he was sent to Washington to do. He has got to go. Thus, I feel I have to vote in whatever manner gives the best chances of replacing Doggett. Right now, that seems to be voting for Dr. Donna Campbell.
That said, Dr. Campbell doesn’t seem to be all that bad. Heck, look how Dr. Campbell regards the Second Amendment, gun rights, and gun issues. Given that, remember what Suzanna Gratia-Hupp said:
How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual… as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of.
Consider then what Lloyd Doggett must think of you. He made it quite clear he’s ignoring the will of his constituency. This is not how an elected official — supposed servants of the citizenry — are supposed to behave.
I’m putting my vote behind Dr. Donna Campbell to represent the 25th Congressional District of Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.
As a general note… folks… these 2010 elections are very important, on the local, city, and state level, but especially on the national level. You must get active, you must contribute money, you must contribute time, you must do something positive towards effecting the outcome of these elections.
iOS 4 – finally
I’ve been in the professional software business for about 15 years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, bugs happen. Consequently, never use the x.0 release of something — always wait for x.0.1. 🙂
So when the iOS (iPhone/iPad OS) 4.0 came out, I did not want to upgrade. I am evolving into what they call an “old fart” and am no longer an early adopter. It’s simple. I write enough of my own bugs in a day, I don’t need to have my life hampered by someone else’s. 😉 There are always inevitable bugs (software is a human process), and since I need to get things done in a day I’ll wait until the kinks get ironed out.
I have been wanting to upgrade to iOS 4 because it does have a lot of cool new features. So last night I bit the bullet and upgraded.
In general it’s a nice upgrade. I’m sure I’ll see more advantages to the multitasking as I use the phone in daily use.
I did not like that all my photos showed up fuzzy. It seems when you sync photos they get optimized for the phone, which is fair, but why the upgrade process couldn’t have automated this is curious to me. It was simple to fix (just sync), but if it was that simple again, why the iOS 4 upgrade process didn’t just handle it was odd.
I do not like the loss of being able to program what a double-click of the home button does. I liked being able to double-click it and get the camera. Now it’s dedicated for multitasking app switching. While I understand the phone has limited interface and something had to give well… that just wasn’t my favorite to have to go.
I like that I can have picture wallpaper everywhere. I know, small thing, but hey… if I want to stare at a picture of my wife and kids all the time, it kinda sucked that only the lock screen showed the picture.
While this wasn’t an iOS 4 upgrade, I was running low on space so I enabled the “Convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps AAC” option and resynced my music library. That took all night to do, but recovered a lot of space. Will I notice an audio fidelity difference? Maybe, but unlikely. I’ve abused my ears with many years of loud things (heavy metal music, motorcycles, guns, etc.) so I have some hearing loss and really doubt I’ll get all audio-snob about this. More space is more important, but if by chance I notice, I can always change back.
I haven’t noticed much for reception issues yet, but the upgrade is still young. 😉
Now to upgrade Wife’s iPhone….
Getting back in the groove
The home renovations are mostly done. All the actual work is done (and the house looks really good… like a whole new house), it’s a matter of moving everything back into the house. Wife’s been doing a great job on that and lots of stuff is getting purged along the way.
Unfortunately, due to all this work, I’m about a month behind in my daily reloading routine. Just couldn’t get past all the relocated furniture to the reloading bench. 😦 Things are improving, so hopefully in the next couple days I can get back to it. I’m so behind, and I really wanted to get to starting 6.8 SPC reloading before hunting season started. But heck… I’m not even sure I’ll be going hunting this year. *sigh* I’ve had no time to prep for it. But if I do, I really want to use the 6.8. I’ll be fine if I don’t have my own load… the Silver State Armory loads should work just fine.
I’m also out of sync on my daily dry fire. I got out of that groove because the workmen would show up early and go home late and I didn’t want to be drawing guns and making racket while they were here (tho later I find out at least a few of the workers were hunters). Gotta get back in that groove too.
The worst part? I’ve gained some fat around my middle. Due to the trip to Omaha, then the couple of weeks without a kitchen, it was constant eating out. Some things prior to all of that also didn’t help. Now that things are normalizing my meals are much smaller and I’ve already seen a couple of pounds drop. I also need to get back to exercising… clearing out the garage again helps, and I still haven’t been able to check out that Aikido dojo… been so busy.
But, things are normalizing and I’m working to get back in the groove. Might even be able to post here a bit more than I have been.
Optimist vs. Pessimist
My Dad spent much of his life involved in politics in some manner or other. Consequently, most of my life has had me indirectly involved in politics. I recall being a kid and being dragged to all sorts of functions and speeches and mostly just hating it (not a kid’s idea of fun). But for some reason, there was one speech that was memorable to me.
Dad knew a good speech sometimes starts out with a joke relevant to the topic. I don’t remember the body of the speech nor who he was delivering the speech to, but I do remember the joke. It went something like this:
There were these two boys: one was an optimist and one was a pessimist.
A team of scientists wanted to study their behavior, so they put each of the two boys in a room. They put the pessimist in a room filled with all the latest toys and fun things — anything that a young boy would want to have and then some. They put the optimist in a room knee-deep in manure. The scientists left the boys alone in their rooms, then after some time had passed, came back to see what the boys were doing.
The pessimist was sitting in the middle of the room, his arms crossed and a scowl on his face. He hadn’t touched any of the toys, just sat there.
When the scientists looked into the optimist’s room, they saw him picking up a piece of manure and flinging it over his shoulder. Then he picked up another one, flung it, another and flung it, and kept repeating this action. The scientists wondered what he was doing so they stopped the boy and asked him.
The boy replied, “With all this manure, there’s got to be a pony in here somewhere.”
and laughter followed.
I admit, at the time I didn’t fully understand the depth of the joke. Yeah I understood it at some level, and for whatever reason the joke stuck with me — probably the mental caricature I conjured of some boy flinging pieces of poop over his shoulder. 🙂
As I’ve progressed through my life, the joke has never left my mind. It’s always been a reminder of how to look at life. When you have good things and all you do is bitch and complain, life’s going to be pretty unhappy for you. But even if life hands you a mountain of shit, if you can smile at it and find some sort of good in it, life works out a lot better.
Thinking aloud, because life is good.
Wife and kids are at Mass. I just finished assembling a cabinet to go by the front door. Note to self: stop buying furniture that requires assembly… yeah it’s not hard (I’m reasonably mechanically inclined), but I’m just tired of “some assembly required”. So since I’ve been doing a lot of work all day, I figured it was time to have a beer (Dogfish Head India Brown Ale) and reflect a bit. I’m going to reflect aloud because well… I’ve got a blog and this is part of why I have it: testimony, recording of life, and so on.
This whole house renovation experience has given me much to think about, and I’m not just talking about the obvious stuff with the house itself. It’s made me revisit and rethink a lot of things.
I’m thankful for my job. I’m compensated fairly, and I work hard to earn that money. I am not earning as much as I could for my skill set and experience, but the trade-off is I get to work from home and be involved with my wife and children. Being so close to my children and having such a good relationship with them? That’s the best compensation in the world.
I’m thankful for Wife. Her good taste guided this renovation, and folks… the house is gorgeous… tho not as gorgeous as she is.
I’m thankful for the generosity of others. In-laws that helped to make this happen. Neighbors that offered up boxes for storage, their kitchens so we could have home-cooked meals instead of eating out constantly. The guys doing the work, and the extra things they’d do to help out that were beyond the scope of their employ. Employers (be it KRT or my day job or whomever) for understanding what I’m going through and working with me on this endeavor.
I’m thankful for having patient children. It’s been massive upheaval the past some weeks, and while it’s worn on all of us, the kids have been real troopers throughout.
I’m thankful for beer. ’nuff said. 😉
I’m thankful to have been graced with what I have in life. I’ve got a good house; I’ve the ability to renovate it. I can keep my family reasonably comfortable throughout all this upheaval. I can only hope that I’m living up to what my parents wanted me to do, which is to be the best I can and provide for my family better than they provided for me.
I realized that going without TV all this time… well sure, I feel a bit out of the loop (I’ve missed those new Futurama episodes), but life goes on just fine and I really haven’t missed it all that much. I tossed around the idea of getting rid of the TV, but upon expressing that to my children well… you should have seen the look of horror on their faces. 😉 TV won’t be going away for the household, but certainly it’s less and less an issue for me (tho I still love me some Invader Zim and the occasional Outdoor Channel show).
I’m thankful that I’m soon to return to my normal routine. Getting up in the morning, reloading 200 rounds of 9mm (haven’t done that in a few weeks while all this chaos has been going on), dry fire practice, some sort of physical exercise, then getting to work.
I’m sure there are other things that I’m forgetting right now.
The bottom line? I feel humbled by the house renovations. I’m very blessed and I do NOT want to take it for granted. I see much that’s around me and I realize that I’ve got a good thing and I have NO place to complain about anything (except the way our Federal government is behaving… that’s a duty). Life is good, and I’m so fortunate to have Wife to experience it all with.
Busy
Been busy today, will be busy tomorrow.
House renovations are almost complete. Just spit and polish, touch-ups, and other little things at this point. Painters will be back on Monday for that, and work crew will probably stop by to help with some cleanup and hauling. But otherwise, it’s about done!
So today, out shopping for things we need, like some mats and rugs for entryways, bathroom hardware, other things. I’m assembling stuff, installing stuff, and putting my handyman skills to work.
So… no blogging for a bit. Back eventually.
I see the light!
Yes… I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The home renovations are almost complete!
New carpet in the master bedroom today, then a lot of little paint details to deal with. We’ll move stuff back into the house over the weekend, inspect work, and hopefully all that has to be done next week will be spit-and-polish sorts of stuff.
Can’t wait for things to return to normal (ha ha ha). I want to get back on my reloading routine. I need to go check out some new martial arts schools. Kids have schooling starting up again. Just right from one chaos into the next. 🙂
Appreciation
We’re still living in our house while it’s being renovated.
Living room is dismantled, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom, other little things. We’ve basically moved into the kids’ bedrooms and took a few things with us, like coffee pot and microwave. Using paper plates and plastic utensils, making do with how things are. It’s cramped, unusual, boring. It’s only going to get worse as the week wears on.
But, you consider that there are people who live in such quarters every day. You consider there are people who live in worse conditions every day. After a week or so more, we’ll be “back to normal”, we’ll be moving things back in, setting back up, and going back to our lives. But others, their lives will remain as they are.
That I can do these renovations? I’m fortunate.
It’s been a good experience to make you step back and be appreciative and thankful for what you have.
Random stuff
I was supposed to head out to KR Training today to help with Basic Pistol 1 and Defensive Pistol 2. Would have been cool too (well, not the weather) to see Jay again.
However, due to all the home renovation work, plans changed and I was to stay home instead to help put things back together. You see, the kitchen was supposed to be “done” by Friday, but it’s not. Now, I’m not going to give the contractors a hard time. I’ve done a lot of projects in my day and I know how time estimates can go and how there are times you just don’t know how bad something is until you get into it. The cabinets are being painted and the wood has been soaking up the paint pretty heavily so it needs more coating than originally anticipated. So, it’s just taking time. No big deal, but it means the work scheduled for today (putting the kitchen back together) isn’t happening today.
So I could have gone out to KRT.
But earlier this week I did something to my left ankle and it’s been hard to get around. Spending all day on my feet at KRT would be the worst thing for me right now.
I guess somehow things worked out.
So instead, I think I’ll sit at my desk — because there’s few other places I can sit in the house — and work on some of my own software. I don’t want to talk about the future project, but I’m really hoping this one will pan out nicely.
All I’ll say is… if you’re a gun owner and a Mac user, let me know. I’d like to talk with you. 🙂
Stuff From Hsoi 