Me

Hiding in the walls

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

So the house is undergoing renovations.

Look what we found during demolition:

Click to enlarge, if you need to.

Can you tell what those are?

They’re gecko eggs.

They pulled out the fridge, then pulled off the trim boards and that’s what they found hiding behind the trim board. Makes sense. It’s dark, it’s warm. Geckos are all over this part of the country, see them all over the outside of the house and every so often on the inside of the house (tho the cats take care of them very quickly).

If you think this is an “eeeewwwwwww!” moment, just let your mind wander with it a bit. If this is what you can find in your house, imagine what’s in place that you can’t find? In the walls, up in the recesses of the attic. The workmen tell me they’ve seen far more “interesting” things than this.

Just think about that as you’re falling asleep tonight. 🙂

Rampant Chaos

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

A long-desired dream of Wife’s is finally coming true.

We’re getting the house renovated.

Flooring, paint, all sorts of things. It’s a big undertaking. Some things were completed before we went to Omaha, and right now we’re in process of getting the big work done: floors and paint.

Wife and Kids are all gone, which is good. They’re staying at casa de Wife’s parents. The house is a wreck, barely inhabitable, loads of stuff in the air which would be ugly for the kids to breathe. Heck, I had to change the air filters on the furnaces today because they were caked with dust from all the tile demolition; I need to go to Lowes to pick up more filters because I know I’ll need to change them again very soon. I have to eat out for most every meal, which has its pros and cons. Tonight I’m going to go get some Thai food. Mmmmm.

So it sucks right now, especially being home alone and with much of “habit and routine” out of whack due to the state of the house. But I know I’m blessed and fortunate to be able to have this work done, and I know when we emerge on the other side the house will be beautiful and Wife will be happy.

And in the end, Wife being happy is all I really care about. 🙂

I wanted to go visit a local Aikido dojo tonight, but the painters are still here and I can’t leave. So the visit will have to wait. I’m itching to try Aikido. I don’t know how the experience will be, and I really don’t care at this point how it will evaluate. It’s just the next path on my journey that I wish to explore. It will be what it will be.

And to bring guns into the discussion… it’s cool to talk with the guys doing the work. They’re all hunters to some degree or other. I’m sharing some of the water buffalo meat with them because, why not? 🙂

Concealed Carry in Omaha

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

This trip to Omaha was my first road trip with my concealed handgun license.

Short summary: uneventful, but strange.

Resources

First, let me list the resources I used in planning:

opencarry.org – while I had no plans on open carrying, opencarry.org has a lot of useful resources, such as their maps and a Nebraska-specific forum.

handgunlaw.us – which contained a great number of legal resources, such as summary and reference of Nebraska’s laws.

concealedcarry.net – which has more legal resources, such as a reciprocity map and a trip planner.

Travel

We were driving, so I used the resources to see what laws would be like as I traveled to Omaha. In the past my drive took me through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, then into Omaha. However, I could see Iowa could be sticky so I took a different route that went from Texas to Oklahoma to Kansas, then directly into Nebraska. Google Maps even showed that as the best route from here to there, so all worked well.

You must remember that while there are Federal laws regarding firearms, much of what you’d actually deal with would be state laws, so you needed to know your stuff. Thankfully, most of the laws for the states I was travelling through was similar enough, at least in ways that it mattered. For instance, I was only traveling through Oklahoma and Kansas so I didn’t sweat details like churches or government buildings… but could rest stops be an issue? Apparently in Oklahoma, yes, but only if you went into rest stop buildings. I spent more of my time being concerned with the details of Nebraska and Omaha specifically.

Omaha Details

Unfortunately due to gang violence in Omaha, Omaha has enacted a lot of “feel good” laws that have served to only abridge law-abiding citizens and do nothing to curb criminals. For instance, you apparently can open carry in Omaha, but you must get a permit to do so. Omaha required registration of guns. But yes, past tense.

While you can conceal carry in Omaha, a simple sign is all it takes to deny lawful carry. I’m used to Texas’s “30.06” signs, which means the signs are well-defined and without question. Nebraska has no formal sign (tho they have a suggestion), so it makes things a little less clear. Here’s a sign from the entrance to the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo:

It’s one of the better and more clearly defined signs that I saw around town. And believe me… I saw a LOT of denial signs. It’s a shame tho because it demonstrates a great misunderstanding. The only people who will be denied and that will obey are people with CHL’s — these people have been vetted by the system, background checked, fingerprinted, educated, tested, and generally deemed by society to be good, law-abiding folks. Meantime, the criminals and gang-bangers are just going to waltz into the zoo without a care in the world. The signage stops the people who shouldn’t be stopped, and doesn’t stop the people who should.

*sigh*

But here’s one odd point.

Back in 2007 there was a shooting rampage at the Westroads Shopping Mall. If I remember correctly, Westroads was VERY anti-gun, signs all over the place denying guns, banning guns on the property, and so on. Obviously those signs did them no good, and one could argue it made for a victim-rich zone and helped to create the tragedy. I went shopping at Westroads with Wife — we even parked outside the Von Maur department store and went into the mall through the Von Maur doors. I saw no signs denying lawful concealed carry anywhere. I still don’t know what Westroad’s policy is, but it seems they aren’t willing to allow the same tragedy twice.

I also find the signs interesting from a legal vs. “normal humans” standpoint. The way the signs read, it denies concealed carry. So… could I switch to open carry and enter that establishment? Of course, in Omaha it may require their open carry permit, but say I had one. How does this all play out legally? It’s evident that if an establishment posts those signs they don’t want guns at all, but the wording is such that it implies open carry would be alright.

It’s all rather odd and I’ll just say I’m happy to live in Texas.

To Nebraska’s credit, the CHL law is still young, but I’ve watched them over the years and they are working to clarify and improve the laws. So, just have to give them time… because the wheels of the law should generally turn slowly.

So….

So to me, I’m glad I was able to continue carrying on my trip. It’d be nicer if things were simpler and more straightforward. For instance, while many driving/road laws are state-based, there is great uniformity across the states. This greatly facilitates interstate travel. Such uniformity would be welcome in laws pertaining to concealed carry and self-defense. In many respects the laws are similar, but the devil lies in the details and that’s where it’d be nice to see improvement.

I’d also like to see Omaha improve. Yes I know gang violence is a problem, but denying and abridging the law-abiding is not going to help anything. The laws are well-intended, but good intentions pave the road to Hell. Just remember that.

All in all, an uneventful trip (in this regard), and that’s a good thing.

Whispering Pines Bed & Breakfast

/ hsoi

The main purpose of the trip to Omaha was to allow my Dad some time with his grandchildren. The plan was for him to take the grandkids for a few days of spoiling. 🙂  Thus, Wife and I had to make ourselves scarce. What to do?

We went to a bed & breakfast.

Some years ago I worked at a company and there met Jeanna Stavas. We hit it off due to our common history with Nebraska. About 5 years ago Jeanna opted to leave the high-tech industry and opened up a B&B called Whispering Pines, in Nebraska City, Nebraska (about an hour drive south of Omaha). I figured that would work out great: let my Dad have the grandkids for a few days and Wife and I spend a little together time at a B&B.

We’ve never done the B&B thing before, and after this experience I think we’ll do it a lot more. It was fantastic.

The Roost

We stayed in “The Roost”, which is an old barn converted to a charming room off from the rest of the house. Everything was quiet, private, and quite nice. The pictures on the Whispering Pines website just do not do the rooms justice, and I think that’s really a limitation of the medium… how can you convey the experience in a picture?

Jeanna was a fantastic host, tending to any needs we had. She even took care of a special request I had to have some of Wife’s favorite flowers already in the room. A little wine, a little cheese, some other treats. Nothing was a problem.

Breakfast. Oh my my my my my. Simply delicious. Gourmet, but not pretentious at all. Fresh fruits, local eggs, veggies from her garden. So so so good.  Oh, and let’s not forget the constant supply of home-made cookies. Mmmm.

Nebraska City itself was pretty cool too. Wife and I actually liked just driving through the town looking at the houses… quite a contrast from your modern tract house subdivisions. Local restaurants like the Timber Room at the Lied Lodge were wonderful. Oh, and Parker’s Smokehouse wasn’t Texas BBQ but it was pretty darn good. Frankly, one nice thing was just seeing the wide variety of trees and other plants, because down in our part of Texas it’s just not as diverse. We also took in the Lewis & Clark Museum, which was really well-executed. Of course, we also did a little shopping, and there were some fantastic little shops down there.

So with all this wonderfulness there has to be a downside somewhere, right? Depends how you look at it. 🙂  We didn’t have great coverage out there, so some phone calls didn’t make it through or would drop. If we were lucky we got AT&T’s Edge network (no 3G at all) but most of the time we had the “o” (GPRS) or “Searching…” or “No Service”. Jeanna does have some Wi-Fi, but the signal doesn’t make it down to The Roost (tho you can get it up at the main house). So, lack of connectivity…. good or bad, all depends how you look at it given your reasons for going to a B&B and how badly your “Internet addiction” is. But it did point out how spoiled I am here in Austin. 🙂

All in all, Wife and I had a fantastic little get-away for a few days, and Jeanna @ the Whispering Pines Bed & Breakfast was at the heart of it all. We look forward to going back.

What’s up?

/ hsoi

I spent the past week in Omaha, Nebraska visiting family. Good times. Tiring, but good.

Lots of experiences and observations to share. I’ll type them up over the coming days.

We pulled back into the house around 1 AM. So, I just woke up. Need breakfast. Need to unpack. Got things to tend to.

Back eventually.

Thinking Aloud – the next phase of my martial journey

/ hsoi

You may have noticed recent posts have discussed the martial art of Aikido.

Yes, I’m thinking about it, but am far from decided.

What follows is just me thinking aloud about the matter. If you’re curious about what’s going on in my head, read on.

Continue reading →

Steal my software? I’d prefer you didn’t, but…

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

As a software developer, I’ve dealt with the subject of piracy of my product long before it was hip for the RIAA and MPAA to demonstrate what dinosaurs they were with their business model.

What’s the bottom line?

Don’t treat your customers like criminals. Yes, you are going to have some loss to theft. But you only have so much time and energy, so how do you want to spend it? Fighting the people who spoil it? Or making the product better for everyone else?

Granted, with the rise of the Internet and a new “electronic-based” generation, the times have changed somewhat: digital piracy is easier because we’ve got more ways to share files, distribute files, and a whole generation that views things differently than us old folks. But in the end how a developer chooses to spend their time is still the developer’s choice.

I prefer to make better software.

Yes, I still think it’s worthwhile to put some restrictions and registrations in place. I still think some measure of anti-piracy prevention is necessary. If nothing else, it lets legitimate users know this software isn’t free and here’s an avenue through which they can properly obtain it. But it will always be an arms race between the good guys and the bad guys, and if you spend all your time fighting the pirates then you’ll spend none of your time making good and useful features — things that actually will sell your product and get people to use it.

Jeff Vogel is a games developer and he makes the case that yes, you should steal his software — to an extent.

Generally, I agree with him. Piracy is wrong and I won’t go out of my way to encourage it. I think Mr. Vogel rationalizes the behavior of pirates a little too much, but it’s refreshing to see developers trying to look at the situation from the other side.

And while I’m not sure his solution is truly the best solution, it’s an interesting one:

If you like PC games but you usually pirate them, I want you to start actually paying for one game a year. Just one. Please. You should do it because you need to do it to help something you like to continue to exist. Sure, you might find that doing the virtuous thing feels surprisingly good. But, in the end, you should do it for the reason anyone ever really does anything: Because it is in your best interests to do so.

In his bottom line, he’s right, and I’ve known this for years — especially when the whole Napster thing started. It is this point that folks need to be educated about and it is this point that needs to be driven home. After that, it’s up to the individual if they wish to continue to steal or not, and it’s their moral and ethical judgment call to make. There’s not much more we, as content producers, can do.

For you see, whether we make software, porn, music, movies, digital images, any sort of this media or anything other sort of product in this world… we do it because we like it. We do it because we’re good at it. And we do it because we need to make a living to feed, clothe, and house ourselves and our families. Consequently, we hope to get a return on our labor. The way our markets work, that means if you want our product, you buy it; you get our product, in exchange we get your money and can then use that money to buy food, clothing, shelter and whatever else we need or want in life. If we exert this effort to make a product or provide a service and this product/service does not make us any money (for whatever reason), we will not be able to spend our time on that product/service because it’s not being fruitful and we’ve got tummies to fill and backs to clothe. Thus, if there’s no return on the investment, then the investment will stop.

Why should you care if I can’t feed my family? Because if I can’t feed my family, then the thing I make that you love will disappear.

If you like the music I make but I’m unable to make it any more, no more new albums from me.

If you like the movies I make but they take weeks or months to make and I need to spend that time doing something else to pay my bills? Then I won’t be making any more movies for you to watch.

If the software I write is useful to you but you found a bug or the software is no longer compatible with your latest computer upgrade, don’t expect me to be able to fix and update my software unless I’ve got the time and money to do so.

In the end, if you like what I do and want to continue to enjoy what I do, you need to support what I do. If you support what I do, I can then continue to produce what it is that you find good, and we all live happily ever after. 🙂

So yes, there can be some interesting points about piracy, and it is a Sisyphean task to fight it. But only addressing symptoms will never make it stop nor even reduce it. Educating the consumer about how their theft only comes back to bite them and it’s in their own best interest to not steal, that’s what will truly help the cause.

Score!

/ hsoi

We’ve got one of those “under-sink” water filter units. City of Austin water is fine to drink, but a little extra filtration is nice (especially when the water supply gets those algae blooms).

Trouble is, the filters cost $46. Gets expensive to replace them every 6 months. Plus the only place in town I know of that sells them is Home Depot and they’re frequently out of stock. So since it was time to replace them again, I opted to go online.

Found this website: waterfiltersfast.com.

The filters are being sold for $31. That $15 price difference is substantial! Order $99 worth of stuff and shipping is free. And no sales tax. Overall savings was huge… basically 4 sets for the price of 2. I’ll eventually use them all so no harm in stocking up.

And fast is right. I ordered on Saturday and received the “now shipping” invoice a few minutes ago. Happy happy.

Changing switches

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I am not an electrician, but I’ve been doing some small wiring projects around my house.

Some of the outlets are loose in that you put in a plug and the plug doesn’t hold very well. So as I discover a problem outlet I’ve been swapping the outlet for a new one. Doesn’t take long to do the actual swap work, the hardest part is figuring out which circuit breaker to turn of. There’s no wiring diagram for the house, no labels on the switches, but I’ve got one of those little gizmos that plugs into the outlet and emits a signal which another dohicky held against the breaker switch can pick up and tell me which circuit things are on. So it’s certainly not guesswork, just time consuming. And yes, while I’ve done my best to identify and label things, I always find out that the wiring in the house is pretty strange and well… maybe there’s logic to how it was wired but I sure can’t find it.

I changed the light switch in the laundry room to have a motion sensor switch. These would be good to have in other rooms of the house as well, especially from a security standpoint. Wife and I are still deciding which rooms and locations would be best.

And today I completed another change, which I’m very happy about.

The exterior lights are controlled by interior switches. I went in search of timer switches so the exterior lights could be on a simple timer. Well, Lowes didn’t have any simple timers. They had these $27-each digital timers, but man, they are cool! You set the date, the time, if you’re on Daylight Saving Time or not, and you even set what region of the country you’re in (we’re in “south”). Then you can program up to 7 slots of on-off times: for each day of the week, for the 5 weekdays, for the 2 weekends, or for all 7 days of the week. You can set actual on and off times, or — and this is the cool part — sunrise or sunset. Because it knows the date, the time, and your general location in the USA, it calculates the sunrise and sunset times and you can have the lights turn on at sunset and on at sunrise. That is COOL! I don’t have to adjust the timer all year to go on and off when I want (which is sunrise and sunset). Sweet!  As well, I wonder if the switches have an internal battery or maybe a capacitor because after wiring switch 1 and programming it, I then learned that switch 2 was also on the same circuit as switch 1 so while I wired switch 2 I figured I was going to have to go back to reprogram switch 1. But I didn’t, and it was still the correct time. Nifty!  I do hope it’s just a capacitor and holds enough to deal with short power interruptions, because I don’t want to change batteries… what a pain.

Anyway, nice stuff. Helps the house look nicer, work better (automation is good!), improves security. Can’t beat that for a few hours of work this morning.