Me

Monster Hunter International – Finished it

/ hsoi

I just finished Larry Correia‘s book, Monster Hunter International.

My early feel on the book bears out to the end. It’s a monster/sci-fi sort of thing, and while I can enjoy that stuff it’s not 100% up my alley. And yes, lead character Owen Pitt is the uber-hero. But by the time you get to the end, you see how it all fits together. I do see that Owen is given slightly more faults, he isn’t indestructible (sorta), but he’s still uber-hero. Then again, this also isn’t the deepest of books. Does there have to be any real character development here? There really isn’t and no it’s not really necessary. The book takes place over a short span of time and is pretty directed in what it’s trying to accomplish. That’s not really a bad thing… this isn’t high literature, but it’s decently written and sure damn fun.

And really, that’s the thing that surprised me the most in reading this book: how much fun I had in reading it. I did not expect it to be as much fun as it was. I found myself smiling a great deal. I found many nights where I’d be reading before bed and not wanting to put it down, only having to because my Wife found me falling asleep (not due to the book, just a long day and my body said it was bedtime). It was an enjoyable read. You can’t take it too seriously, you just suspend disbelief (and oddly, the whole “keep an open mind” thing is part of the story itself), and enjoy it.

I repeat what I said before. If this was made into a movie, I’d pay money to see it. It’d be a lot of fun. Get Julie Strain (NB: her website is NSFW) to play the role of Julie Shackleford. In fact, due to the events during the climax and given the book is told in the first person, I wondered if shooting the entire movie through Owen’s eyes (first person perspective, like a first person shooter game, which in so many ways fits) would be an interesting way to do it. Might be annoying to have it filmed that way, but the thought popped in my head that it could make for a way to do this. For reference, while I was reading the climactic scene I was thinking how Owen’s eyes were crusted shut… you would see what he sees: darkness, black, nothing. But you hear everything. Then when his eyes are opened, well, you’ll see it all again through those eyes. *shrug* I am not a movie maker.

Yes, Larry Correia is a gun nut. It’s so evident. Little gunny gems throughout the book.

Anyway, I enjoyed the book. I thank TXGunGeek for lending me his copy of the book. Now I suppose I need to enter the songwriting contest. 🙂

Sick day?

/ hsoi

It’s the day before a 3-day weekend, and I see the emails going about the office saying “so and so is out sick.”

Uh-huh.

4 day weekend? 🙂

Now I don’t actually doubt they’re sick. It is the start of the school year and thus begins the giant petri dish of illness. In fact, both Wife and Daughter have visited the new “urgent care” clinic down the road from us just this past week and are currently working their way through their antibiotics.

But it got me to thinking, like it does every year.

Sick days are a disadvantage to working from home.

When you’ve got something that’s bad enough you wouldn’t want to go into the office to spread germs about, but it’s not incapacitating sick, well…. you can still work. Is there expectation that you’d work? Maybe. I know I at least put that upon myself, and maybe because I’m home, I’ve nothing else to do, I’d likely sit in front of the computer anyways, so might as well be productive.

But it also means I rarely use my sick days in a day. I may still get sick, but no one’s going to get my germs anyways, so I continue to slog away.

Oh well. A minor disadvantage really. The fact that some days I’ve been able to program in my underwear, that works just fine. 🙂

Another shot at competition?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

There’s an ISPC match tomorrow. I’d like to go. I’ve been wanting to compete, but it’s just not happening for various reasons.

Thing is, I suspect tomorrow’s match will likely suffer the same fate as my prior attempt at competition. Weather predictions are for rain through much of the weekend, possibly heavy.

I’m happy, we are in desperate need of rain. Any rain we can get is good and I’m not going to argue with (other than wanting more). But given the predictions and the way the sky looks even this morning, I’m not going to plan on tomorrow’s IPSC shoot being my first. Another time….

Meantime, I must prepare for what’s coming next….

Use it or lose it

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I’m constantly amazed at how long it takes to gain things, but how quickly they are lost.

Since I switched my martial arts study, I haven’t done any Kuk Sool work — I’ve barely thought about it. However I realized that I’m losing a few things. Not the mental knowledge, but the physical conditioning that Kuk Sool gave me. Granted, I’m using a different set of muscles and physical movements, so I’m gaining physical conditioning in other ways. But some of the losses I’m not liking. For instance, Kuk Sool did a lot of leg work. My current studies aren’t as heavy on leg work. Consequently, I’ve noticed my legs fading a bit.

So this morning after doing a bunch of kali stick work, I opted to run through all my Kuk Sool forms. Nothing intensive, but just something to feel the burn again.

And burn I felt. 🙂

My legs are aching a bit from all the low stance work, going in and out of low stances does work your leg muscles quite well. It also made me realize how part of my ankle rehab was coming from doing all of that work. Furthermore, my knees aren’t so happy these days, since they’re not getting the same level of use/strengthening. It’s all crazy.

So, I’m going to resolve to at least do a bunch of deep knee bends every day. Nothing major, just something to ensure I use it and don’t lose it. And I’ll keep doing my forms from time to time. It’s good for me. 🙂

What it feels like to be a Libertarian

/ hsoi

Via John Stossel, an article from John Hasnas (Assoc. Professor, McDonough School of Business, Georgetown University) on What It Feels Like To Be A Libertarian.

Libertarians spend their lives accurately predicting the future effects of government policy. Their predictions are accurate because they are derived from Hayek’s insights into the limitations of human knowledge, from the recognition that the people who comprise the government respond to incentives just like anyone else and are not magically transformed to selfless agents of the good merely by accepting government employment, from the awareness that for government to provide a benefit to some, it must first take it from others, and from the knowledge that politicians cannot repeal the laws of economics. For the same reason, their predictions are usually negative and utterly inconsistent with the utopian wishful-thinking that lies at the heart of virtually all contemporary political advocacy. And because no one likes to hear that he cannot have his cake and eat it too or be told that his good intentions cannot be translated into reality either by waving a magic wand or by passing legislation, these predictions are greeted not merely with disbelief, but with derision.

It is human nature to want to shoot the messenger bearing unwelcome tidings. And so, for the sin of continually pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, libertarians are attacked as heartless bastards devoid of compassion for the less fortunate, despicable flacks for the rich or for business interests, unthinking dogmatists who place blind faith in the free market, or, at best, members of the lunatic fringe.

Call me a heartless bastard devoid of compassion, a despicable flack, an unthinking dogmatist, and perhaps even a member of the lunatic fringe. Call me a Libertarian. What is a Libertarian?

The core idea is simply stated, but profound and far-reaching in its implications. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life – as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same.

[…]

Libertarianism is thus the combination of liberty (the freedom to live your life in any peaceful way you choose), responsibility (the prohibition against the use of force against others, except in defense), and tolerance (honoring and respecting the peaceful choices of others).

Live and let live. The Golden Rule. The non-initiation of force.

Call us crazy….

Range time

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Slipped out to the local indoor gun range this morning.

First thing I noticed was all the new benchrests they had! All the old worn out crappy rests were gone and replaced by new ones. I figure they know hunting season is coming and they’ll have a lot of business from people zeroing rifles and needing rests. This was welcome, especially because that’s why I went today.

My goal was to get my Savage 11 set with a “zero” to be 1″ high at 100 yards. Looking at all the data, that should allow me to be within “minute of dead deer” from 0 to 200 yards without any problem. Zero at 100 yards would risk me being too low at 200 yards, and zero at 200 yards I think would have put me a little too high at 100 yards or less. So at least on paper, this should work for me. Thing is, I really wanted to go to a range with longer rifle ranges today but it just didn’t happen for various reasons. My hope then was if I got it 1″ high at 100 yards I could refine and ensure 200 yards at a later date.

I started using my Prvi Partizan .308 168 grain BTHP match ammo. I have tons of it and it’s far less expensive per round than my hunting load (the Federal Vital-Shok .308 165 grain Barnes TSX stuff, P308H). Use that to get me in the ballpark, then finalize it with the Prvi. I believed the rifle was set to 0 at 100 yards, so I knew I’d need to adjust a bit. Shot a few rounds, got things adjusted, and thought it was good enough to switch over to the Federal.

Loaded one round of Federal, shooting at the lower-left little target thing on the sighting-in target. Look through the spotting scope and I don’t see anything on the paper. Huh?!?!  I look around at the center of the target and counted 6 holes. But I only shot 5 Prvi on that target at the center. Is that saying my Federal was off that much? Loaded another round and shot at the center of the target. Sure enough, that one went way high and right. Wow. I know that loads can be different, but I did not expect that drastic of a difference. I only had 8 rounds of my hunting load left so I had to get things dialed in quickly. I managed to do so and think she’s there, but I’m not totally sure. It could have been the gun, it could have been the cheap scope, it could be the rounds, maybe the barrel was warm enough that it was throwing things off. I don’t know for sure.

So, I packed up and opted to head home. I’ll try again in the near future and only use the hunting load. See where that first cold-barrel shot lands and go from there.

Ultimately I really need to get going with reloading. One box (20 rounds) of the P308H is $45. Now that I’ve got a lot of good .308 brass and I’ve got a box of 50 .30 caliber Barnes TSX, man, it’ll be far cheaper to load it all myself (probably half the cost).

Anyway, it’ll be nice to get the rifle sighted in before the rush of everyone in the area cramming up the ranges trying to get sighted in. Plus we saw a bunch of hogs on the game cameras at the deer lease. Mmm… pork.

Workin’ on the lease

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I spent all of yesterday out at the deer lease working on getting it ready for deer hunting season. Went out with my buddy C and his brother M (we’re the 3 on the lease), and we got a bunch of things done.

Went out and scouted the property again. We’ve got a good feel for the lay of things. The property owner had put up some flags to better clarify where the back-end of the property was, so that was useful to see and adjust to. One thing we also noticed was, as we were driving in we noticed how green everything was. Obviously they’ve been getting rain and for a while, whereas Austin’s been bone-dry. But as we got onto the actual property, it wasn’t as green as everything else had been; greener than Austin, but not as lush as places within a 50 mile radius. Ah well, it’s still getting rain and things should green up as the temperatures are going down too. And we do need more rain as the tank/pond still has water but certainly the level has gone down significantly; refilling it is needed.

We found a lot of good places to hunt, from stands (either formal or make-shift), stalking, good stuff. C managed to snag a great deal on a box blind via craigslist. He then built a 4′ platform riser and much of our morning was spent assembling and preparing that stand. You can see in the picture that it’s mostly complete. We still need to work on the windows, finish up the painting, and we’re thinking about doing other things with the roof (currently just a sheet of hardiplank). Still, it’s a pretty nice setup and overlooks the pasture.

Set up two other stands. A free-standing tripod in a back corner of the property, single person. Then we also set up a tree ladder stand near the pond. The ladder stand was cumbersome to put up. I had assembled most of it at home, but just trying to hoist that sort of weight at that height well… leverage and gravity are not your friend here. Plus trying to find the right tree that is 1. in a good hunting spot, 2. provides the structural support the stand needs… that’s tough to come by. But we found a good setup. We also opted to drop one set of ladder rungs so instead of being about 14′ from ground to the platform it’s now about 10′, so when seated the gun will probably be 12′ to 14′ in the air (didn’t measure exactly). But that’s good enough. It also put the bottom of the platform just atop a sturdy branch, which added nicely to the stability.

Put out another feeder, near the tank. Moved one of the game cameras to watch that feeder. We’ll see what shows up. Speaking of which, we did clear the photos off the 3 cameras we have on the property, but we haven’t gone through them all yet. M took all the pictures and is started to go through them. An initial email from him said he saw a coyote along the back fence. There’s also been much evidence of hogs on the property, which is great for C and me since we love to hunt hogs (M will take a hog but doesn’t really care to seek them out). Lots of deer on the cameras too, but no word yet on quality and “takeable” bucks.

It was a long day, much work, but overall productive. We’ll probably have a long work weekend in early October to finish up what needs to be done. Season starts in November. 🙂

Some random comments:

  • The iPhone is quite handy. All the pictures were taken with it, and while it may lack things like flash and zoom, you can still get pretty decent pictures out of it. Certainly better than a lot of other mobile phone cameras.
  • As well, I’m glad I bought the iPhone 3GS. The GPS functionality is quite the boon. I took coordinate readings of various things on the property, which then when I got home I could feed into Google Earth and map out. I could easily figure out things like distances (e.g. from this stand, how far to this fence or that tree so I can know exactly how far the shot would be). I want to go back out and get coordinates for many more landmarks on the property…. could make for a nice motorcycle ride.
  • Mobile phone reception at the property is fine. No 3G network, but there is AT&T’s Edge network… slow, but something.
  • We found a dying cow back by the tank. The property owner had been out earlier in the morning and was aware of it (we called him to report it). Kinda sad to see. By afternoon it was dead and the buzzards had arrived. A bit of a humbling experience.
  • We saw deer throughout the day. Antlerless, but they certainly roam about. Hopefully that will mean good things for us.
  • I went through almost 2 gallons of water, and still barely peed. Never felt dehydrated, but it’s amazing how much water was gone through and it was pretty much just keeping up.
  • Under Armour is awesome. I felt so comfortable all day, even in a long sleeve shirt.
  • Sunscreen is your friend. Yes, I used it all day long. And my boonie hat.
  • Given we may be shooting ranges from 100-200 yards for many shots, I want to get my hunting rifle to the range to see where it lands at 200 yards. I’d like to do it soon, before the onslaught of people wanting to get zeroed in 2 weeks before hunting season.

Saving us from ourselves

/ hsoi

I see a headline at SayUncle that grabs my attention: Kimchi.

Being as my mother is Korean, I of course have eaten lots of Korean food…kimchi is quite the staple of my diet. In fact, just reading Uncle’s blog post and the comments, my mouth started to water, the bottom dropped out of my stomach. Man… talk about Pavolvian response. 🙂

But the point of his article was something we ourselves had encountered. Being a geek, that means my workday tends to be surrounded by other geeks, especially back in the days when I worked out of an office building. Back then a lot of the folks I worked with were single and had little life other than work. Or if they did play, often it was with people from work and many times playing multi-player games over the office network. One thing Wife and I realized was how they didn’t eat all that well, or if they did it was expensive restaurants.

Looking for a job opportunity, Wife thought she could make food for my office-mates. Make huge batches of various dishes, portion them into containers, sell a week’s worth of containers to someone. They can stick ’em in the freezer, then defrost and heat in the microwave as needed. It would have worked out great… except for massive amounts of government regulation. It’s interesting that I can make food to feed my family — arguably the people I care most about and above all others wish to ensure their good health and welfare — in this kitchen, but I can’t make food for someone else, at least for profit, in the same kitchen. That I don’t have two mop sinks somehow means this kitchen isn’t good enough to make for-profit food for someone else. I could have a huge dinner party for my friends, and that’s OK, but if I charged money to consume the food suddenly the food isn’t clean enough.

Go figure.

Small incident

/ hsoi

Had a small incident tonight.

I’m chillin’ with Daughter in the house when Oldest rushes into the room and says, “Mom needs you, now.” Urgency there, I get up and go. Wife briefs me. There’s some dude hanging around the street-light a couple houses down. Gave Oldest the willies, and it was certainly odd behavior. Strange person, why would they just be hanging out at the street-light?

I head outside to check on things. I’m able to do a few things in the yard to look busy and otherwise occupied, but watching what the dude is up to. Then I see good neighbor across the street, who has a similar penchant for paying attention to the neighborhood goings on. I head over and we talk, as he too noticed the dude.

As we watched, dude’s behavior wasn’t too suspicious. Perhaps just waiting for someone to pick him up. But then it dragged on. We were standing outside talking about life, family, work, hunting, playing in band back in grade school, whatever topics. But dude was still there… hour went by, still there. It went from a concern, to probably nothing but we’ll keep an eye, to “this is just getting weird.” Why just standing there, doing nothing, for about an hour? Gave the police a call to have them drive by. I don’t know exactly how long it took them to show up, but I know I checked the clock and 15 minutes went by and it was some time after that before APD rolled onto the scene. Two cruisers showed up, they spoke with dude, eventually some people from a nearby house come out and there’s interactions with the police and discussions. Back and forth for a bit, APD seemed eventually satisfied and left. People from house brought a phone out to dude, and eventually he leaves in a car with someone (they had pulled up prior to APD arriving).

While the men were outside minding things, the women of the neighborhood were on the phone alerting all other neighbors. People were watching out their windows, noting things, taking descriptions, pictures, whatever. If something was going to happen, we were going to be prepared. 🙂 Plus, as everyone connected, it was evident that others had noticed dude too and had similar concerned feelings about the matter.

No idea what was going on, but it was still all very strange. We’re attempting to contact APD to find out the story.

Lessons learned:

  • Don’t blow off gut feelings. If something feels wrong, act on it.
  • You don’t know when ugly will strike, so always be prepared. I have all my everyday gear on me (including my flashlight), every day all the time. Wife needed me now, I was able to go and was ready (well, didn’t have my phone on me… still trying to work out a good “gotta keep it charged but need to keep it on me” strategy). I didn’t have to take time to get all my stuff together, I was ready and could act immediately.
  • Ensure all your neighbors know each other and have each others contact information. You don’t have to be friends, but you are neighbors. Even if you might not like your neighbor, there may come a time where there’s a bigger evil that will require you to come together.
  • If you’ve got a team, ensure you’ve got a plan. My wife and I? Team. Kids can be involved too. Then have plans, and ensure people know their parts; practice. Wife knows one of her primary roles is communication: she calls proper people, gathers information. I didn’t have to walk out the door and tell her to do any of this; she knows her role, I know mine. Kids even do to, for instance, they know that yeah sometimes in life you might be able to argue with Mom & Dad, but when something serious is going on you must obey… and they know that.
  • Don’t count on a fast police response. I’m not surprised they didn’t come blaring in with sirens within 2 minutes, and I expect if they had to get two cruisers/officers and coordinate a bit that that would require a little more time too. I wish they were a little faster in their response but in the end it was acceptable response time. Still, it was quite a long time for the response…. you can only count on the police for so much, and your immediate safety isn’t necessarily part of that equation.
  • If you believe in self-defense, your training shouldn’t be in only physical skills such as punching or shooting. You need to know street smarts, mental skills, and other such things. That will take you further.

I believe the world is a generally safe place. I believe the world is filled with good people. But evil can come in any form to any place at any time. Nothing is immune. If you don’t want evil to harm you and your loved ones, it’s good to be prepared to deal with it when (not if) it comes your way.

Front Fiber unfixed

/ hsoi

Since I had to fix the fiber optic insert on my front sight, I tried using the green insert.

It didn’t pan out.

It just didn’t show up bright enough. Not enough to “draw my eye” to the front sight. After a few days of dry firing and working with it, it’s just not working to grab my eyes.

So I just changed it back to a red fiber. Much better.

That said, this isn’t me advocating red as better than green. My understanding is it’s truly a personal thing depending on how your eyes work. Some people work better with green, some better with red. So I’m glad I used the opportunity to figure out what worked for me, and it seems my eyes like red.