This is my 1000th post.
That’s all there is to say. It’s like those Monty Python sketches with “this is my only line” as the only line.
Me
Productive
I’ve been fairly quiet today since I’ve been away from the computer most of the day.
The garage has been bugging me lately. Junk has been piling up, hard to get around, and I can’t do things in there. Biggest thing? All that reloading equipment from exodus still sitting there, unused. It’s been getting to me. I took the Speer Reloading manual into the house a few weeks ago and have been reading it. And I think with hunting season upon me I have lofty dreams of my own hunting load. So… before I went to bed last night I decided I was going to revamp the garage.
Off to Home Depot. Buying wood screws, brackets, wood, sundry other things. I also picked up a new Makita cordless drill and circular saw. Some years ago I had a Porter-Cable cordless drill but when it died a couple years back and I couldn’t get replacement batteries I opted to get a corded drill. I made the wrong decision to save a little money and the drill I got lacked important things like a brake and a clutch. So while I was happy with the corded drill the rest of the drill sucked. So the Makita was a great purchase and is very cool, but the battery didn’t seem to last very long. Supposedly it’s a fast recharge tho, but when I put the battery on the charger it flashed the “bad battery” lights at me. Hrm. Not good. I’ll contact Makita in the morning. Never owned a circular saw, but it’s one of those things that the past some whiles I’ve had enough times when it would have been nice if I had one (always managed to get by), so I figured now was as good a time as any to finally buy one.
My ceilings are high so I put the shelves up high all around the perimeter of the garage interior. Just simple brackets, plywood, and wood screws. I was then able to store all the boxes of holiday decorations, coolers, and various other things up high. Threw away a bunch of crap, rearranged a bunch of stuff, and then I was able to give the reloading table a proper home. Ahhhh… 🙂
The garage looks good. Motorcycle looks happy in there (tho it’d look happier out on the road of course). There’s room to move, better organization, and again… a place to reload. That’s the important thing. 🙂
Looking for canes
I’m wanting to buy a cane… fighting cane.
The following is no endorsement. Just me Googling and listing what I find. I have no direct experience with any of these products… yet. I’m hoping to find someone to buy a good cane from.
There’s Cane Masters. There’s Goju-Shorei. But I want to find something else. Just because I want to see if there’s anyone else out there producing good product at perhaps a better price.
All I want is something simple. Wood cane, of a strong hard wood that can take a beating (e.g. oak). Crook neck/handle. I’d like the opening to be “straight” (no crook going inwards and closing the opening off). Keeping it very simple so it blends in; think: can I take this onto an airplane? That I can use as an actual walking cane, but can use for self-defense purposes as well.
I just found this website, simply enough: walking canes. Lots of great selection, but unsure of the fitness for the purpose.
I do see a lot of the same canes listed at the 3 above sites. Not 100% overlap, but a decent amount.
In the end, wood is wood. If it’s oak, it’ll be strong. It’s then a matter of diameter and things like the size of the opening to ensure it can properly hook onto things.
This looks like a small-time shop doing their own thing: Kentucky Walking Sticks.
Hrm…. most other things I find are crap like umbrella canes, sword canes, rattan canes (I like rattan for my staffs, but not for my cane… too much flex to support my weight). I guess my Google-Fu is weak.
If you have any good suggestions or outlets for quality canes, please comment and let me know.
Rain rain go away
…. actually no, don’t go away because we need a lot more to recover from this drought. In fact, even more rain would be appreciated.
The bummer is that I’ve been trying to do some action shooting competition, be it IPSC or Steel Challenge stuff, and every match the past some whiles and into the foreseeable future have been cancelled due to rain… either rain coming down or too much rain beforehand and the ranges are soggy messes.
Such is the case again this weekend.
*sigh*
I really want to start, I try to keep my schedule open… but the rains come. I’m happy for the rain tho.
Changing my stance on WKSA
Yes I know. I’ve been pretty critical and unhappy with the direction the World Kuk Sool Association has been going. Just look at past postings and you can see.
Yesterday’s meeting changed me a bit. I gained some deeper insight into many things. I saw a little more of the human side of things. I see what In Hyuk Suh is doing, and I really don’t blame him. In the end, he’s just a man that wants to take care of his family, and I find no fault with that; in fact, that’s how any good father and husband should be. I still don’t think the franchise agreement is sound business… I think existing schools may get by but the agreement is mighty scary for any new franchisees. So while the implementation may not be best, the goal… well, I’m a little warmer to it.
I think what really changed was a solidifying of a stronger separation between the art and the business. You see, I really don’t have a problem with the art. I think the art itself is good, is sound. There are only so many ways the body can move, and things like the main curriculum really work to help teach you that: both how to move your body and how to move someone else’s body. The structure of the curriculum is very well done, and there’s a lot of subtle things in the structuring that are well thought out. Sure it’s not perfect and there are arguments that moving some things around might be better, but on the whole it’s pretty well done and not just something slapped together. Is it a perfect art? No, but there’s a lot about it that is good and sound. I still love the art itself.
But the business of the art… that’s really what drove me away. Be it this franchise stuff, be it all the politics, all the bullshit, all the watered down teaching, the memorization-regurgitation aspect of it all, money money money “>money money money, buy t-shirts! buy merchandise!… this is all business stuff. In the end, business killed it for me.
So like I said, yesterday really revitalized me. It was a situation that, business wise, was well… practically business free! So little bullshit. The teaching was sound, working towards truer understanding and application. Old school, where business doesn’t really matter and it’s just art. Man, that’s great. So yes, I’d love to have more private lessons if he’s willing to do them. 🙂
I’ll still be critical of WKSA, if needed. I don’t tolerate bullshit. But let’s not confuse the business and the art.
A Kuk Sool kind of day
Today was a good day. Interesting day. Educational day.
I had the good fortune of having lunch with a particular gentleman. This man studied Kuk Sool for many many many years. He’s well versed, Master level, skilled. He’s also very friendly and talkative. He loves the art, and that was evident in his teaching today.
OmniObjectMeter, I love you
Last night and this morning I’ve been dealing with some odd behaviors in the code I’ve been writing. I know it’s my mistake, the trouble is finding just where the mistake is. I spent time in the debugger observing behaviors that lead me to believe some object instances were not being released thus causing the side-effects I was seeing. As well, the lack of deallocation is a pure memory leak. So, find and fix the leak and many things should improve.
The current tool from Apple for finding memory leaks is the “leaks” tool of Instruments. I do think Instruments is cool and very powerful, but it’s also extremely obtuse and complex. It’s a tool that I don’t need to use all the time (in fact, rarely). Consequently what I learned the last time I needed it has left my head so I have to ramp up all over again. That’s just too much precious time spent, and too many brain cycles distancing myself from the problem at hand. Tools should not get in the way of solving your problem. Before Instruments, Apple had tools like MallocDebug and ObjectAlloc, which were useful and simpler tools but still weren’t the best in terms of interface and usability.
Some years ago I discovered OmniObjectMeter from The Omni Group. It was a godsend. It allowed me to pinpoint and track down memory leaks quickly and easily. It was so simple, so logical, so well thought out. It was easy to get going with it, it was easy to use it, and most importantly you could find your problems very quickly. Unfortunately OmniObjectMeter was left to languish and didn’t work for some time (there was a “secret beta” that helped it limp along). But I’m happy to report it’s back up and kicking with version 2.6 that was released February 2009. You see, I tried using Instruments this morning and while I could see the leak I couldn’t exactly pin down the location that caused the leak. I lamented for OmniObjectMeter, checked the Omni website on a whim, discovered v2.6, downloaded it, and within 5 minutes my leak was found, fixed, and verified.
That’s testimony. 🙂
I’m glad she’s still working. Plus, now OmniObjectMeter is free! I’m proud to say I paid for my copy (well, I got the company to pay for it) all those years ago. So FTC, yet again this is just a satisfied customer telling the tale of his happy experience.
Endorsements
So the FTC says that bloggers must disclose.
When did the FTC start having jurisdiction over blogging? I obviously missed the memo. Actually they don’t, it’s still regulation over advertisers, but it’s acknowledging that blogging is one new avenue for marketing. Macworld has more.
Conceptually all of this bugs me and I could rant on for a while about it. However in the end, I have a degree of “OK” with all of this. The thing is that the Internet is a place ripe for transmission of information that’s less than truthful. When you couple in the ease of anonymity, it makes it hard to always believe your sources. Of course, one remedy to this is to trust your sources, do the work to vet them, and if you can’t be sure of the source then don’t be sure of the information. It’s one reason I make no bones about who I am on my blog: I’m willing to stand behind what I write and willing to let you know the source of the material. I am human, I will make mistakes, I will evolve my ideas and opinions and knowledge over time, but I do my best to be solid.
But of course, the reality is if someone wants to be unscrupulous, they will be and no law or guidelines or regulation will stop them. Thus in the end what the FTC did amounts to a whole lot of nothing useful and a whole lot of regulatory burden placed upon law-abiding citizens that are just trying to live their lives without hassle.
For the record, all of the “endorsements” and “reviews” and such that I’ve done on this blog are purely my own personal opinion. Anything I’ve reviewed or endorsed has been from my own personal experience, paying for the thing out of my own pocket, and either being a satisfied or unsatisfied customer. If I ever did receive something free, I’d say so regardless of the FTC ruling, because my own personal integrity depends upon it.
Updated: I like what Linoge did: made a “For Hire” category and any such actual paid/compensated endorsements/reviews/etc. and such get classified under that. Makes a nice way to corral things together and make context evident. So, I’ve created such a category and you’ll note that, at least as of this writing, this posting is the only thing under that category so some context to the category can be retained.
Ammo rotation
Funny this comes up now. Sebastian just wrote about ammo rotation and SayUncle commented upon it.
You see, yesterday while working the deer lease it eventually started to rain pretty hard. We were at the back of the property, too far from camp (and my rain coat) and so we just kept working. I was soaked to the bone. I did remember to leave my iPhone in a dry place and I also left my spare magazine there. However, given the amount of water I took on, on the drive home I made the decision to rotate out all of my carry ammo, even tho I just did it a few weeks ago (the normal 6 month rotation). My wallet sighs, but I’d rather have the assurance of “known good” ammo. Yes I’m pretty sure the ammo that was in the gun will still go bang, but my life is worth the assurance. I’m even going to change the rounds in the spare magazine because while they didn’t get the soaking, they probably took on some rain during the course of the day. I’ll shoot the “wet” ammo next time I go to the range to practice.
Sebastian hit upon the key thing:
Ammo does last a long time, on the shelf. But carry ammo is not ammo that’s sitting in a safe or a foot locker, in its factory container, often sealed. You’re carrying it around with you. You sweat, you extrude oils, salts and various proteins, which get on the ammo when you handle it, and are on the dust particles your skin and clothes give off and end up in your gun. Every time you chamber and unload, you’re putting stress on the ammunition components.
So, to rotate or not? Everyone has their take on it. I do rotate my carry ammo on a regular basis (about every 6 months) because I’d rather be safe than sorry. The ammo loaded in a home-defense gun? Not so much, because it’s sitting in my nice, climate controlled house; eventually it will be rotated, but I don’t feel the need to do it as often.
Working the lease
Spent yesterday working at the deer lease. Productive day. Pictures too.
Stuff From Hsoi 