Me

Something in my eye

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Today has been bittersweet for me.

I took Oldest to the dentist to get braces installed on his teeth. Braces: a rite of passage in modern teenager-life. This milestone has been achieved! Now it will be what? two or so years before they’re removed. I took a picture just before he sat down in the chair. I know when I next see him with clean teeth he’s going to look really different from this picture.

First we had to get a cleaning done. Originally he was to get that done last week but some jackass flew a plane into a building and so the roads were closed and we’d never get through. (Aside: we drove by the building today… that was crazy to see). So we got the cleaning done, then had a couple hour break, then back for the braces. During the break we had lunch then had time to kill. Some weeks ago Wife uncovered a Toys R Us gift card Oldest had received as a gift a couple years ago and still had a fair balance on it. During the break we headed over to a Toys R Us and Oldest bought some LEGO.

While walking through the store I passed the infant section. It brought back memories of infant-times and little inside jokes Wife and I share. And there I was… with Oldest. I don’t feel my age; I feel like a kid in so many ways. I still find it hard to believe I’m a father, that I have 3 kids, and that the first one of those kids came along oh so long ago. It was just yesterday I brought him home from the hospital; cliché to say, I know, but the feeling is genuine. And here I am… with a teenager… my teenager, progressing through one of those teenager milestones by getting braces.

I’m happy to see him grow up. In fact, seeing how he handled himself today? I’m quite proud of him. I can see the man this boy is growing into. But seeing him grow up also makes me sad. Not that I want him to be an infant again, but knowing the day is coming when he’s going to leave the house… and damn, I’m going to miss him something awful.

AT-6 Pistol Workout

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Yesterday I took part in KR Training’s AT-6 Pistol Workout class. This is KR Training’s most advanced class, focusing on high speed shooting. It also focused on long distance shooting.

Drills

We divided into two groups of 7, which made it easier to run the line and rotate between the drill stations. I was in group 2.

The first thing we did? Cold? Shooting groups at 25 yards. Not nice. 🙂  But I don’t go to class to be treated nice, I want to be challenged. Was I good at it? Well, let’s just say I’ve improved. What’s it all about? Trigger control. That’s really the key. I will say it’s also about finding a good index point. For instance, on an IPSC target it’s tough to aim “dead center” because it’s just a blur of brown cardboard and what may look dead center this time may be off just enough next shot such that your groups really open up. You really need an index point, such as aligning the top edge of your sights with the “shoulder edge” of the target. But it all depends what you’re going for: smallest groups (which I was) or getting ’em all in the A-Zone.

We then went to shoot the FBI Qualification course. The course was slightly modified, for instance we didn’t go prone because the ground is still a mess due to the near constant rain we’ve been having for months in this part of Texas.

We had a steel shootoff. Nine steel targets were set up, 4 on the left, 4 on the right, and one stop plate in the middle. Each steel was different shape, size, and distance. One shooter on the left, one on the right. The drill was on the buzzer both shooters draw, engage their plates from outside to inside, must hit each plate once, and the first person to hit the stop plate wins. Then the winners shot against each other and so on. This is high speed shooting at its finest. After running it one time with two-handed shooting, we’d run it again one handed, strong side. Then we’d run it again one-handed but you’d have to draw, shift to your weak hand, then shoot.

A special setup was done with some steel reactive targets. These targets are steel targets but with a plastic “man-like” covering, who is then dressed in a t-shirt. The intent is to provide you with a 3-D realistic target that only falls over if you hit it squarely in the vital areas. It’s a great way to break out of training against 2-D targets and non-realistic targets, which just don’t give you the same aim points at this such target does. It was a small scenario simulating getting out of your car and having to shoot on the move (from car to cover), engaging 2 reactives while you did so. So shoot on the move, proper targeting, shooting from cover, and so on.

Then another shoot on the move segment was done along a string of paper targets. Shoot shoot shoot, kneel behind cover, reload, stand up and keep moving and shooting at more targets. Since that takes a while to run (only one person can shoot at a time), after you shot that you’d go back to the steel range and shoot those same steel targets in the same way, shooting and moving.

Intermixed with all of this was drawing, trigger control, sight alignment, dealing with malfunctions, reloading. You weren’t really told to do these things, you were just expected to keep your gun running at all times. BTW, an UpLULA pays for itself very quickly. 🙂

The crazy thing? Next thing I know Karl is saying it’s time to take down the targets. I couldn’t believe 3 hours had already passed and class was over. I was just getting warmed up! I don’t know what the final round count was, but people were saying close to 400. I guess ultimately it all depended how much you missed on the steel targets. 😉

One thing to note. Usually this is a 4 hour class, but Karl ran it in 3. The class may or may not run like this again in the future. We got all the material, due to excellent structuring of the class (the FBI qual, the steel, and the reactive drills were run simultaneously on different ranges with different instructors).

My Performance

On 25 yard group shooting. I am improving, but I still have a ways to go; I’m pleased with my results in the class, but I know there’s room for improvement. One thing I need to do more of is shooting it from a benchrest so I can eliminate some factors from the equation. Make sure I know my sights, e.g. Springfield factory sights shoot high at 25 yards but I don’t have factory sights. Make sure I know the performance of my reloads AND my carry ammo at that distance. Get my eyes used to it. Then move to freestyle, including one handed shooting.

I’m happy to say I qualified on the FBI course. I heard no one in group 1 qualified, and I’m not sure how the others in group 2 did. Tho I’m not out to compare myself to others, there’s something useful about knowing where you sit in the grander scheme of things. My main lose of points was at 25 yards. But my 25 yard shooting here was the best of the day. It’s a matter of just doing more 25 yard shooting.

On the steel, I didn’t come out the grand prize winner, but I was one of the faster shots. I know my problem is high speed trigger control. I do know how to go fast when it’s time to go fast, and slow when it’s time to go slow, but I’ll still feel the pressure of the timer and the other guy and sometimes yank the trigger. Still, I felt good about my performance and even surprised myself at how well I did. Many times in a class I’m wanting to focus so much on particular areas of improvement that my brain gets in the way of things. Here I was of “no mind”. I knew what to work on, but when it came time to shoot I just shot. All the dry fire I’ve been working on since my private lesson with Karl has paid off.

The reactive. Plain and simple: trigger yanking. High speed, high pressure, and I’d yank the trigger and just miss. Not acceptable. But, I know what to work on. As well, I’m going to need to put in an order for my own targets and buy some photo-realistic targets and train with them more often. While I tend to use IPSC-style targets most of the time, the A-Zone just isn’t the same as the vital area.

Shoot and move, I did alright in.

Other general things: I’m happy with my reloading in the sense of the mechanics and doing it at the right point. Scanning, breathing. My draws were better. When I’d hear the “b” in “beep” on the buzzer my hand was moving and I was getting the gun out there as fast as possible, getting on the trigger faster, but taking my time to get the hits once it got out there (all depending on distance, e.g. I could shoot sooner at 3 yards vs. 25 yards). Again I paid some attention to how others were performing on the draw and I was happy to clear Kydex so quickly. Just like all things, getting faster.

What To Work On

Certainly 25 yard group shooting. Yeah, I know people go on about how most self-defense shootings are within 5 yards, and that’s true. But how do you know when it’s your turn you’re not going to be the statistical exception? One of Tom Givens’ students, I don’t recall the details of the story well enough to retell it, but the key point was he had to make a 20 yard shot (and did, and saved his life). And not just for self-defense, but for action pistol competition… long shots do come up.

I’m at a point now where dry fire is still something to do, but it’s actually not helping me so much any more. The thing is, my brain knows when I dry fire there won’t be any bang or issue to deal with, so everything is perfect. I need recoil. I need the noise, I need the recoil, I need to recover from the shot and shoot again. I need that. I’m not going to progress any further unless I just flat out have more trigger time on the range because the things I need to work on won’t come from dry fire. Yes I still need to dry fire and I won’t stop doing that, but I need to get to the range more and regularly.

When I’m at the range, what I need to do is run drills that push me. So, pick a drill like the Central Texas Standards, Two Target No Reload Standards, the Texas CHL qual, Bill Drills, IPSC classifier stages, whatever. Just pick something. Shoot the drill with no par time. The goal with no par time is to shoot it clean so you can be sure you’ve got the marksmanship skills to shoot it. If you can’t shoot it clean with no time, you need to work until you can shoot it clean with no time. Once you can do that, time how long it takes you to shoot it clean. Whatever that time is, that’s now your starting par time. Shoot it now with that as a par time set so you have the pressure of the buzzer. Once you can do that, drop the par time by say half a second. Shoot it again. Once that’s clean, drop it another half second, and so on. This is what I need, because I’ve got the fundamental skills, I can have the accuracy, I can have the speed. I now need to go faster, yet maintain the accuracy. This is how to do it.

One thing to do as well while I work my drills? Ball and dummy drill.

That’s the big things for me, really. There are some other things to continue to work on as well. I’m buying some weighted “blue magazines” (i.e. dummy magazines, but with the same action and feel as a loaded magazine) so I can do more practice of my reloading technique. On the gear front, while I love my combo mag/flashlight pouch, I need to get another dual mag pouch for use in class; the XD Gear mag pouch is OK to get by with but the fact it cants the mags gets annoying. Plus I’ve had thoughts about carrying 2 reloads and putting the flashlight elsewhere on my person. Furthermore, my XD-9 5″ is going to get sent off to Springer Precision soon. Oh, and I need to buy lots of reloading components. If I’m going to spend that much more time at the range, I need lots of ammo. 🙂

That’s about the size of it. A good class.

More later

/ hsoi

Long day. Good day.

Helped with a Basic Pistol 1 class. Took an advanced handgun class.

Shot my 9mm reloads during the class, and got a chance to chronograph the loads.

A few other things too.

All good.

Details later. I need to sleep. 🙂

Alegría

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Cirque du Soleil’s Alegría came to Austin for a 5 night run at the Cedar Park Center.

Last night I took the family to see opening night.

I’ve seen many Cirque shows on TV; Bravo or A&E, I forget which would play the shows and many times run marathons. Wife and I always enjoyed watching them. Of the shows, Alegría was always a favorite. So that it came to town and we could see it live? Awesome.

The kids have never been to any sort of circus, or experienced anything quite like this. We played some promo videos we found online. Daughter of course was excited about it. Youngest wasn’t too sure but did think it’d be neat. Oldest? He made up his mind that he was going to hate it, of course. 🙂  In the weeks since the ticket purchase and leading up to last night, everyone’s respective sentiments towards the show only strengthened. I just encouraged Oldest to go in with an open mind and let it be what it will be; even if he ends up not liking it, he’ll have the experience. I was taken to many events as a child that didn’t appeal to me at the onset and afterwards I knew I’d never do again. However I know my life is a bit richer for the experience. Besides, I’d remind him of all the times he knew he’d hate something and ended up liking it in the end.

And so we went. We decided to have dinner out, and since it was Ash Wednesday seafood was on the menu. I found this little place in Cedar Park called CR Surf & Turf (Yelp listing). Seemed to be decently reviewed and sure enough, the place lived up to the review. It’s a little place, but business was steady and the place was generally 75-90% full the entire time we were there. Service wasn’t horrible, but wasn’t great (e.g. no one ever refilled Wife’s water, or even came by after the food was delivered to ask how things were). Still, the folks were friendly and if you needed anything it was easy enough to ask. The place isn’t too fancy either, but who cares. What’s important is the food and my my my my my…. it was good. We started with a fried calamari. We expected it to be like everyone else does it: little bits of squid, battered and deep fried to a brown, served up in a mound on a plate with cocktail sauce. It was far from that. A light golden batter, meaty cuts of squid, and a fantastic addition of sautéed onions and other things including some sliced fresh jalapeno (sorry, I can’t remember it all). But my my it was delicious, and so different from the norm. Just fantastic. Everyone had their different plates of food and it was all done very well. The fish was delicious, cooked just right. Even scallops, which are so easy to screw up, were done right. Anything fried (e.g. Oldest had a plate of fried stuff) was a very light batter, crunchy, and didn’t feel heavy. I had grilled asparagus as a side, and it was cooked just right… nothing overdone or underdone. And everything came to our table hot… like freshly cooked hot. Just awesome. I’m telling you folks… this was some really good stuff. If the place wasn’t so far of a drive away I think it’d be a regular place for us. Highly recommended. But anyway…. this isn’t a food blog, but the place was so good I had to give them some credit.

So we get to the Cedar Park Center, find our seats. I always try to get good seats for things and this was no exception. Section 122, row C. It gave us a great view of the entire stage, and comfortable viewing as well (no craning your neck to see everything). One thing I’ll repeat about the Cedar Park Center is the place is tiny and the seats are cramped, but there really aren’t any “bad seats”… even the cheap nosebleeds aren’t going to be terrible. I’d say the only “bad seats” would be the ones directly to the left and right of the stage, since you’d be obscured at times (e.g. the large net at the end for the Aerial High Bar performance).

What can I say about the show other than it was well-executed. I’ve seen the show numerous times on TV, but seeing it live was wonderful. The talent, the skill, the ability of the performers is amazing to watch. The kids were certainly wow’d by a lot of things. Of course, I think for them the best part was watching the clowns. I can’t say I blame them… the clown act was updated a bit and was hilarious, especially the use of some running gags. I know Oldest liked the Fire-Knife Dance too.

Speaking of Oldest… at intermission he comes up to me:

“Dad… I’m going to have to eat my words.” And he gives a slight smile.

Yeah I know, Son. I heard you laughing. I saw you hold your breath during some of those death-defying feats. I saw your attention totally captured. It’s all good. 🙂

Catching up

/ hsoi

Work has been good, or at least interesting, the past week. All this new programming stuff that I’m working on has really inspired me and I’ve just been head-down in that. I haven’t read any blogs or news sites in almost a week. I’ve also been a bit lax in replying to some emails. Of course, blogging hasn’t been as heavy as usual either. I know. Bad bad. But work tends to be a higher priority, given web browsing doesn’t pay the bills.

Going to work on getting caught up today.

Modern Programming

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Ye old blog has been quiet because I’ve been occupied the past few days with a fun little project.

You see, every so often Apple releases a new OS version. In this new OS version there’s always all kinds of cool technologies and goodies that makes easier the lives of us software developers. I remember when Apple released Core Data in Mac OS X 10.4 (gory technical documentation here) and what a boon that was for object graph management and being able to work with more complex data structures and files right out of the box instead of having to invent your own management system. Quite a boon. However, we (me and my team) were unable to take advantage of it when it first came out. I’m a commercial software developer and we’re driven by the market… especially what OS version our potential customers are likely to use. Thus if the new technology is only available in some particular OS version we have to wait until that’s our minimum supported OS version. That could take us a couple releases or years before that happens. Thus, we’re always way behind on adopting cutting edge technology.

I totally understand this situation from a market and sales perspective. But as a geek it always pains me because I don’t get to play with the new goodies. 🙂  By the time I get to play with them, I’m way behind the curve. In a sense that’s good because kinks get worked out, maybe Apple has updated the toolbox and filled in the holes. But it’s just not exciting to the geek in me.

Right now I’m working on implementing a new interface for the application I work on. We’re going to have to support Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), and that was really paining me because we’re wanting to modernize the look and feel of the app, but so long as we’re tied to 10.4 that really hampers things. Eventually we were able to come up with a strategy to give the 10.4 users one look and feel, but for users of Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and beyond? They’re going to get something really new and snazzy. The cool part is I get to work with some modern technologies, like Core Animation and Core Image. I know that doesn’t mean much to you non-Mac-programmer types. Just know that a lot of the slick stuff about the Mac OS X graphical user interface comes from these. No, I don’t want to get all eye candy just for the sake of eye candy: form must follow function. But it will allow for a much more modern interface and I don’t have to wait another year or two before I can do it.

I’ve been reading documentation, experimenting in a test bed, and working to come up with a good prototype. It’s just been exciting and I haven’t had this much fun programming in a long time. I’m a kid in a candy store! So I’ve just been head-down in it. I’d love to show you what I’ve been doing but I can’t. Sorry. If you want a vague idea, if you’re a Mac user just invoke Front Row. It won’t be exactly like that, but all that behavior and effect? Core Animation, Core Image, Quartz Compositioning, all make that go.

Giving Obama credit where he’s due

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Over at The Daily Kos there’s an article about President Obama and how he conducts his day:

…last month, when Mr. Obama convened Congressional Democratic leaders at the White House for a marathon negotiating session, another priority intervened.

His 11-year-old daughter, Malia, had a band recital.

Thus did the president of the United States ditch his own health care talks — temporarily, at least — to slip off to Sidwell Friends School for a few hours to listen to Malia play the flute. When the recital was over, he returned to the White House, and everybody went back to work.

I think that’s most commendable of him. He refuses to miss things important to his children. Because while to you and me he’s Mr. President, to Malia he’s Dad.

The article continues:

…He knocks off work at 6 p.m. each evening to have dinner with his family, and has given his schedulers strict instructions that, if he must have night-time activities, they are to take place after 8 p.m. That includes matters of war; in November, as the commander in chief wrestled with sending more troops to Afghanistan, he called an 8 p.m. meeting of his national security team, in deference to his role as father in chief.

He has dinner with his family each night, and then no doubt some time to help his children with schoolwork or just read them a bedtime story and tuck them into bed and kiss them goodnight. Good Daddy.

Of course, some people have a problem with this:

“People elect you not to be a good family man, they elect you to fix their problems, and that’s the cold-hearted reality of it,” said John Feehery, a Republican political strategist. “And all those folks on the Hill, they’ve left all their families at home; they don’t have the luxury of skipping back home in the middle of the meeting to catch their daughter’s recital.”…

John Feehery… go fuck yourself. No we didn’t elect him to be a good family man, but for all the talk of how the President should a good role model why are you and others giving him grief for trying to be a good husband and father? Barack Obama is obviously a man unwilling to sacrifice his family, and let me tell you his job is one that could easily destroy his family. He holds his family in high regard and wants to be there for his wife and children. All those folks on the Hill that left their families at home? They have the choice as to where to spend their time, and they’re choosing to not spend it with their family. That’s their problem and their mistake to make. That’s their loss that they’ll never get back.

You see… this hits home for me, very personally. What I’m about to say some people will probably wish I didn’t air so publicly, but it’s the way things were and you can’t escape it. Better to learn and grow from the mistake so as to not repeat it.

My father has been involved in politics the majority of his life and almost the whole of mine. During my growing-up years my father was a member of the US House of Representatives. He was doing a job he wanted and loved. My father was good at it and one of the few politicians I consider a true public servant. Trouble was, the nature of the job coupled with my father’s passion for it left me mostly without a father while I grew up. Much of the year he had to be back in his home district to do work. When he was in town, many days he’d be up and out the door before I woke up and wouldn’t be home until after I had gone to bed. I didn’t get to see my Dad much while growing up. This isn’t to say he didn’t want to spend time with me or the rest of the family. We would make efforts to do things, for example, I’ll never forget those 3 weeks touring Europe when I was 16 years old; but usually they were big things like trips. While those were nice, it’s those little day to day things that end and add up to mattering more.

I recall being in grade school, probably 4th or 5th grade. It was a special week at school because parents were invited to come have lunch with their children at school. Each class or grade rotated as to the day for the parents to come, and my older sister’s day was the day before mine. I was sitting at the lunch table with my friends when my parents came over to the table. Obviously they had just finished having lunch with my older sister and were coming to say hello to me. When my friends caught sight of my Dad they erupted in hails of “Hi Mr. Daub!” “Hey, Mr. Daub!”… just a chorus of my friends acknowledging my Dad. It was such a proud moment for me, to see my friends regarding MY Dad in such esteem. I couldn’t wait for tomorrow when they’d have lunch with me. Earlier that week I had made placemats as part of the class project, and I was all ready to go.

Then tomorrow came. I got my lunch and sat at the table. I put one placemat to my left and one to my right. And I waited for Mom and Dad to arrive. And I waited. And I waited. Other parents were coming in and the chairs were filling up. I remember one Mother asking if the seat next to me was taken. It broke my heart to say “no” and let her take the seat instead of my parent. Lunch ended, and my parents never showed. I was devastated.

Dad was up on The Hill.

It may seem like a small thing, but it’s those little things that add up to a child. Then next thing you know, your child is an adult and living their own life. That whole “cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon” thing.

I used to hold it against my Dad for the fact he was never around when I was growing up. Of course I no longer do. As an adult with a job and family and responsibilities and so on, I know how it can be and understand. Nevertheless, we are ultimately the ones in control of how we spend our time and lives, and we must realize what is most important to us because time will march on and moments will pass that we’ll never get back. Malia doesn’t really care about health care talks, but she does care that her Dad was there to see and hear her play her flute. To her, that matters more than anything. Mr. Obama knows this, and he’s obviously unwilling to let his daughter down.

My father will never get back the lost time with me as a child. I will never get back the lost time with my father. It’s why when I became a father myself I decided to not repeat my father’s mistake. I swore I’d do all I could for my children, to be there, to teach them, to have experiences with them, and just enjoy life with them. Doesn’t matter if it’s some big fancy trip somewhere or just spending 2 hours at the auto-shop with Oldest waiting to get a flat tire patched up (which we did yesterday). It’s still precious time together. It’s one reason I chose to work from home, because it puts me around my wife and my children all day every day. I don’t get to miss a moment of my wife or kids, and I’m always around for them.

I may be critical of our President in many areas, but here I can only give him praise.

Mr. Obama, you’ve earned some high respect in my book. Even if you fail as a President, I sincerely hope you continue to be a success as a father.

Today is going to suck.

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I just bit myself, hard.

Day job has me as a software developer. I was testing out some changes to a window layout. This window allows you to configure automated tasks… so say, at midnight your computer will automatically execute whatever you told it to do. Well, I was just testing out the GUI changes but needed a task in the window so I created a dummy task. The task ended up being set to move basically every file in my home directory into my Documents folder. I didn’t set it that way, those are just all the initial settings when you create a new task. I didn’t care.. .it was just to be a dummy task for the GUI testing, right?

Only I forgot to remove the task before I stopped work for the day.

I get to my work computer this morning and about shit myself because I saw everything was gone.

Only no, it’s not all gone, it just moved some 97,000 files to a single folder.

Shit. Shit. Shit!

And the sad thing is, my Time Machine backups were turned off because last month it started to constantly choke on these particular files, and I couldn’t resolve the issue. So the last backup I have is a month old. But hey, if I had a backup from a few hours prior I could just blast it back and be done with it.

Damnit.

Well, I know what I’m spending today doing.

*sigh*

Texas Gov… decisions… decisions

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I was listening to KLBJ-FM the other day and the morning jocks were talking about Farouk Shami, Democrat candidate for Texas Governor. They were ripping on him and with pretty good reason. This guy might be popular in Houston but the majority of Texas is not Houston. Could he win the Primary? perhaps, but he’s not going to win the General. He better not.

Bob S. gives analysis as to why.

As for me…

Medina of course seems interesting and I do want to like her, but I fear voting for her will pull votes away from Perry. I may not like Rick Perry but I sure as hell don’t want Hutchison. I always prefer to vote for who I think is the best candidate and I despise voting to game the system. Well, I don’t have to make a decision yet.

Updated: TSRA has released their voter guide for the Texas 2010 Primary Election.

Perry: A+ and the endorsement

KBH: A+

Medina: A

Shami: ? (yes, a question mark)

The crazy thing? If you ignore the ?’s, most people on the list grade decently.