Me

Equal furor

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Lest ye readers think I’m anti-Obama and thus some sort of Republican-lover, read this.

This position is so obviously unhinged from any concept of Republican “principles”.  It has become clear for some time that, while a few Republicans have suggested some real reforms, Republicans believe their best strategy is simply to oppose whatever Obama proposes

I agree. Republicans and Democrats these days both suck, just in their own special and different ways. They’re both for more government, they’re both more taxes, they’re both drunkenly irresponsible. Something to the effect of: Democrats want to legislate compassion, and use my money to do it; Republicans want to legislate morality, and use my money to do it. Libertarians want to do neither, and I get to keep my money. I don’t perfectly mesh with the Libertarian party, but it’s about as close as I can get if I must label myself.

Previous diatribe.

The weather rock

/ hsoi / 5 Comments

Do you know what a weather rock is? It’s a fantastic device for telling you what the weather is. Quite accurate too, far better than those weathermen on TV.

Linoge tells of his weather-rock like story.

I have a similar one.

Wife loves to follow weather. She knows all about the science of it, can even decently predict things. She’s kept an accurate count of how many days have been over 100º in Austin this summer. She really digs weather.

But whenever it looks like rain, she must go look at the radar. Either the dedicated radar channel on the cable TV, or pulling up a web browser and looking at a website with a radar feed.

I just look out the window.

So it’s a fun little joke between us… she can’t confirm if it’s raining or not without looking at the radar. I confirm it by going outside and getting wet or not.  I might be the technology geek, but sometimes old-school techniques work just fine. 😉

Snow Leopard cometh

/ hsoi

Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” is due tomorrow, August 28, 2009.

Macworld has a series of articles discussing the new OS version.

As a Mac software developer I have to keep up with such things. Frankly, the Snow Leopard update isn’t all that sexy for end users. You’ll see there’s no massive nor major feature list upgrade, which is a change. Every upgrade of Mac OS X so far has been a big step forward, so this is the first small step. Frankly what that points to is a maturing of the OS, and I think that’s welcome. We don’t have to be chasing the latest thing all the time and plunking down a lot of money to do so. Well, at least end-users don’t have to be… what Snow Leopard really brings about are a lot of under-the-hood changes that affect us developers far more.

Still, I have people asking me if they should upgrade. That’s up to you. Some people like to have the latest stuff, so if you like being on the cutting edge, then by all means be there at midnight when it goes on sale. One big feature for end-users is built-in support for Microsoft Exchange. If you have to work in an Exchange-based environment, you may find this quite welcome.

I must admit that I’m still a bit of a hold-out from converting fully to Apple’s own software. I still use Microsoft Entourage for my email because frankly it’s been the best Mac email client for a number of years. I have moved my calendaring to iCal (tho ToDo’s remain in Entourage because iCal’s doesn’t cut it), and with the purchase of the iPhone I have to use the Mac’s Address Book a lot more (thankfully Entourage can sync between its address book and Address Book.app). But with the massive amount of email, folder organization, rules, automation, and other such things it’s just tough for me to make the transition… probably take me a day or two just to try to get it all set up, and when I’ve attempted it in the past I discover Mail.app just isn’t quite there. But now with the Exchange support built-in, there may be more feature parity and it may work out. So I’ll probably reevaluate it at some point. The reality is, you do get further on the Mac working with Apple’s technologies because things like Address Book, iCal, Mail, etc. are all well-integrated into the system. They mesh with your iPhone better. Plus since developers can have access to such things (e.g. the Address Book API’s) the greater user experience can be enhanced if you’re taking advantage of what Apple provides. While some people don’t like this “monopoly-style” approach to things, it’s actually what makes the Mac such a great end-to-end experience. Instead of lots of disparate parts that don’t really hook together well causing the end-user a lot of frustration in accomplishing simple tasks, you’ve got parts that integrate well together from the hardware level through the OS lower layers to the higher layers to the end applications, and with everything hooking together, things can “just work.” User experience is so important and that’s what really differentiates Mac from other platforms.

So we’ll see. For me the key is being able to get my work done in a day with minimal-to-no hassle. So far so good, so it’s tough to want to change unless I can see improvement in that area.

But being a developer, I have been using Snow Leopard for a while and find that it’s just another upgrade. Being a “minor” upgrade for users, the impacts to me as a developer mean that I’ll still be supporting Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” for some time. Believe it or not, users are still using Tiger a fair amount. I can’t say why, but one possible reason is Tiger is the last version of the OS to include “Classic” support. If people are still relying upon Mac software from years gone by that was never rebuilt to be Mac OS X native, they would want to stick with Tiger. Trouble is, it’s going to be harder and harder to maintain that. Snow Leopard itself is Intel-only: PowerPC-based Macs are officially heading off into the sunset. Still, there’s not a whole lot at least in the work I do that would force one of my products to be Snow Leopard-only, and while I’m certainly working on a few Leopard-only things, so long as Tiger users exist and continue to buy software while holding out on that 4+ year old OS well… we’ll keep supporting Tiger users. Of course one potentially limiting factor will be Apple’s developer tools. Snow Leopard’s version of Xcode 3.2 does not install things for targeting 10.4… you have to do a custom install to get them (seems to be SDK 10.4 and gcc 4.0.x); so the writing is on the wall even from Apple: move forward.

Frankly, that makes sense for Apple. You see, at the heart of it all Apple is a hardware company. To make things like Mac OS X, iWork, and other bits of software, that’s really only done to make the hardware functional and useful. Macs, iPods, iPhones — it’s all hardware. The family iMac is a PowerPC G5-based iMac. It’s long in the tooth, no doubt. I’ve been wanting to replace it with a new Intel-based iMac for some time, but I have a rule with hardware purchases. You see, everyone always wants the best and wants to minimize obsolescence. There will always be something bigger, better, faster, cheaper somewhere on down the line, so there’s really nothing you can do about it. So you use what you’ve got as long as you can, push it until you truly cannot wait any more… not just desire wait, but some larger need. Then buy the best you can afford. So now that PowerPC is officially dead to Apple, eventually the family iMac just won’t be able to cut it any more. It should last a bit longer, but push is coming to shove and a new purchase is in the wings. Works well for Apple’s bottom-line, doesn’t it? 🙂

Some thoughts on socialization

/ hsoi

Heather, the Swiss Army Wife, points out an interesting article in Psychology Today magazine.

Here’s a direct link to the article.

The article is about how, at least here in the United States, we’ve built a cultural and social structure that created this thing known as the teenager. A state where they have a lot of freedoms and abilities, but yet they don’t. Where mentally and physically they are capable of many things, yet we’ve put massive restrictions and burdens upon them. As a result, we’ve created a lot of the “teenager vs. parent” conflicts and generalized teenager angst. It’s an interesting read.

One reason Wife and I choose to homeschool is because of the breadth of people our children are exposed to. Our kids are not locked in school rooms with 25-35 other kids about their same age and development level, day in and day out for the majority of their young lives. In fact, much of the time you go through each grade in school surrounded by the same people. Then many of them are involved in after-school activities, and often those involve the exact same people the kids see during the day with perhaps some specific variance but still generally divided by age/grade. So it’s really just this small slice of folks that the kid interacts with, all around the same age and development. It’s the blind leading the blind with sometimes far too often the only external guideance coming from less desirable sources like TV, movies, and other bits of popular culture. Granted you can expose children to folks of other ages and development levels, but “with our busy lives these days” that doesn’t often happen.

Homeschooling tends to lend itself to children being exposed to a cross-section of people of all ages. My children attend Daily Mass, which is mostly attended by elderly. When doing things in their 4-H program, they’re working with kids from ages 8 to 18. Even just in daily schooling the 3 kiddos are with each other, all of their different ages and development stages. There’s much to be learned from this, especially exposing kids to older folks (role models) and allowing your kids to sometimes be the older folks (role models). From the article:

Teens in America are in touch with their peers on average 65 hours a week, compared to about four hours a week in preindustrial cultures. In this country, teens learn virtually everything they know from other teens, who are in turn highly influenced by certain aggressive industries. This makes no sense. Teens should be learning from the people they are about to become. When young people exit the education system and are dumped into the real world, which is not the world of Britney Spears, they have no idea what’s going on and have to spend considerable time figuring it out.

This isn’t to say that homeschooling is the only way to get kids exposed to the right people, but it does show what homeschooling can offer, especially when the biggest concern folks have about homeschooling is “socialization”. Regardless of how your children are socialized on a daily basis (homeschooling, private school, public school, etc.), don’t worry so much if they are being socialized; if the children interact with other humans on a regular basis, they’re being socialized… even us homeschoolers let our children out of the dungeon once in a while. 🙂 Instead, concern yourself more with the quality of the socialization they are getting.

MHI – in progress

/ hsoi

The gun blogger world is all aflutter about Monster Hunter International.

I didn’t get it (it being everyone getting so gah-gah about the release).

I guess I still don’t get it, but I guess if you know who Larry Correia is (and before this I admit I didn’t), then I guess that’s part of the fun. Plus, books like this just aren’t my thing. I’m a geek… I tend to prefer non-fiction. Subjects like in MHI aren’t totally out of the realm of things I’d enjoy, but I just really had no compelling reason to read the book.

Nevertheless, TXGunGeek loves the book and and lent me a copy.

Now I see James Rummel wrote a review of it, probably one that the gun-blog-fanboys will be all up in arms over, so to speak.

I’m only on chapter 5 or 6 (don’t remember, book is in the bedroom), or whatever chapter after Owen shows up at MHI and asks what happened on December 15, 1995 or however it all goes. I didn’t intend to start reading the book yet because there’s other things in my queue that should come first… but man, Atlas Shrugged continues to be unappealing to me. 😉

So far I’ll say the book feels fun. There’s no question Correia knows his guns and this is quite filled with gun geek stuff. The story seems to flow well enough and the reading is fine, but I’ll have to agree with James that even in the few chapters I’ve read Owen does come off like an amazing uber-hero without much of a flaw (other than maybe not telling his Dad the whole truth). I must admit, when they were reading off Owen’s history and said “black belt in two martial arts” I found myself asking “OK, which ones?”. 🙂  Still, I don’t like to get too tied up into things… suspend disbelief a bit and just enjoy the fun.

I’ll see how things come out whenever I finish the book.

Updated: Tweaked a few things in the above text, and look… Larry Correia responded to James’ review.

I will say. As I read this, I can’t help but think the book would be a lot of fun if it was made into a movie. Sure I like seeing character development, I like seeing more deeply fleshed out and realistic characters (even Superman had problems). But I also know that sometimes just mindless fun is good too. Sometimes movies without much of anything except a loose story for an excuse to provide lots of on-screen action is good stuff. Frankly, MHI (so far of what I’ve read) could really lend to that.

More thoughts on snub ammo

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

I was headed to Cabela’s last night to get some hunting stuff and realized that I should probably look for some ammo for the snub. I must admit, I’m still not settled on what ammo to use for self-defense. I’ve got this pull towards wanting to use the Gold Dot 135 grain +P’s, because I like Gold Dot and know they make solid stuff, plus there’s something about carrying and handling unjacketed lead that bugs me (probably the health-aspect of it all) so I’d like to carry some sort of jacketed ammo. Yet, as I look at ballistics data on a lot of your JHP rounds for .38’s (as shot out of snubs, regardless if the load is specifically designed for short barrels or not), they tend to get the expansion but not always the penetration. I think that’s perhaps one thing that bugs me about Hornady Critical Defense is that part of its design is to not penetrate more than 12″. If 12″ is considered the FBI minimum, to not go more than 12″ by design feels faulty to me. I can only guess why Hornady made such a decision (risks of overpenetration, since primary consumers are civilians?). But, all this data is partially subjective.

The thing is, expansion is certainly desirable, but if you don’t get it deep enough to hit vitals then expansion doesn’t matter. You want both depth and width, but given a choice between the two I’d say depth comes out as slightly more important because vitals are buried down deep and you need to ensure you get to them. Given that, while I don’t want to carry LSWCHP’s I think that’s really the only way to go for a .38 snub. The main reason? They get the penetration, and some expansion. Granted they may not expand as much as a JHP round, but they get the penetration and seem fairly reliable at doing so… then some expansion as a bonus.

I just look at data such as brassfetcher’s, and while it may be a single point of reference it’s still useful info. Look at this (but note the barrel lengths). Even consider this:

2-inch .38 snubs
There seems to be no JHP bullet cartridge that is capable of providing a reasonable balance of adequate penetration and reliable expansion. A bullet that expands will not penetrate deeply enough, whereas a bullet that does not expand will probably overpenetrate.

As a result, we feel the best cartridge for .38 snubbies is the 148 grain wadcutter target load. (MacPherson, Duncan: Bullet Penetration, Ballistic Publications, El Segundo, California, 1994. p. 247, Figure 10-2 Cylinder Bullet Penetration Depth.) The sharp-edged shoulder of the full wadcutter design provides the best penetration and wounding efficiency for this gun/cartridge combination.

Take that as you wish, as that was printed 11 years ago, but did include the Gold Dot in the testing.

I still don’t think I’m settled on what ammo to use, and I reserved the right to change my mind. But for now, I think I will stick with LSWCHP’s, and presently the Buffalo Bore 20c/20 stuff since that’s what I have. Didn’t see any for sale at Cabela’s (the only place in town I’ve seen Buffalo Bore for sale).

The quest continues….

Didn’t happen… again

/ hsoi / 16 Comments

My second attempt at pistol competition was a bust. The Aggies say if you do something 3 times it becomes tradition… so I hope my next effort is successful. 🙂

While most of the Austin area didn’t get rain yesterday, apparently parts of it did. One of those parts was the Austin Rifle Club. Got there this morning and the match was cancelled. They got dumped on with rain and the new action bays were muddy. Some were also full of standing water. The bays were only recently completed and I’m going to guess this was the first time they were rained upon. So while most of the drainage was good, it wasn’t perfect and this was the first time they got to see that. A lot of ARC members were standing around talking about that and how they’d have to fix the bays to remedy it. So… while perhaps the match didn’t happen, hopefully the rain meant good things for the future.

Before I left I dropped an email to foo.c to see if he wanted to join. He called me back, I missed it (don’t know how…. but the iPhone’s vibrate apparently doesn’t vibrate enough, and for whatever reason I didn’t hear the ring either). Called him from the muddy parking lot and asked if he just wanted to go to the regular bays at ARC to shoot. I swung by his house, picked him up, we came back to ARC and shot for a while.

I got to try out his new Rock Island Armory 1911. It’s not as sweet at his Wilson, but pretty darn close. Certainly makes you wonder if all the money in something like a Wilson is really worth it. Wilson had a slightly better trigger, the RIA wasn’t too bad. He also had this Sig P6 which … gah… if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all, so I’ll just stop. 🙂  Fun little beater gun, but wow, that DA/SA action is ugly and the DA pull is junkyard dog ugly.

I shot my Buck Mark a bunch. Gosh that gun is fun to shoot.

Then got some trigger time with my XD-9. The fiber popped out of the front sight. Put it back in but it popped out again and I couldn’t find it. That sucks. I’ll contact Dawson Precision in the morning. I was shooting OK. It’s evident I haven’t been to the range in a while. Dry fire all you want, in fact you should dry fire a lot. But in the end, you gotta get to the range some because you need that recoil to really make things go. Darn this ammo shortage situation… a big reason why I haven’t been to the range and only dry firing. 😦  Still, shot OK.

So, while today wasn’t the day I wanted, it was the day I needed. Happy to have gotten the trigger time. Good to hang out with a friend. I’ll try competition again some other time.

Finally going to try it

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

I’ve mentioned I’ve wanted to try competition shooting. I figured a good place to start was Steel Challenge type of competition. One time I was ready to go, but it didn’t happen. Now Austin Lone Star Practical Pistol Club has moved to the Austin Rifle Club because of their newly built action shooting bays.

This is the fourth Sunday of the month, which means a steel match.

I’m going to try it.

I’m going to shoot my .22 Buck Mark with iron sights (total stock factory gun). It’s the cheapest thing to shoot and I’ve got far more .22 LR ammo than anything else.

I’m excited at trying out competition for the first time. I’m a little nervous because I have no idea what to expect, and ensuring I have all the right equipment for how they like to do things. But I’m looking forward to giving this a try.

My goal? Just to shoot and have fun, get familiar with the club and people and how everything works. But if Caleb’s Shooting Sports Jargonizer is correct, that really means I want to win. 😉  Actually to win or not doesn’t matter (tho I’d love it). The real desire is to not come in last place, especially because of procedural errors, rules infractions (especially safety issues), or disqualifications. 🙂

I’ll be back….

I guess I was lucky

/ hsoi

Back from our shopping day. I guess the gods were smiling upon us.

First stop was JC Penny’s. They’ve come a long ways and overhauled their image and merchandise. We actually managed to knock out most of our shopping there, racking up a hefty bill. When we got to the car I took a moment to look at the receipt to see how much we didn’t spend (note: not “save” because this isn’t saving, it’s just not spending as much) and I noted that we were charged tax! I knew we’d have tax on a few little things, but I checked the math and we were charged tax on everything! That’s not right. I went back in and pointed it out. Seems they had some problems with a bunch of registers charging tax. They thought the register I checked out on was working, but apparently not. In comes the manager. The only way to fix it was to totally void the transaction and start over. So, on the faulty register she voided it all out, then we had to haul all our stuff to a register in the back of the store at the exchange/returns counter and have everything rung up all over again. Yeah, a pain… but, no big deal.

You see, here we go again with the InSights ABC’s: Always Be Cool. Smile on my face, taking it easy, no big deal. And it really wasn’t a big deal. Sure it was a bit of an inconvenience, but the manager kept apologizing and I just looked at her and said “Hey, shit happens… no big deal.” and smiled and relaxed. I could have pitched a fit, but what good would that have done? Frankly, I was in a great mood, I had no desire to complain, so ABC was just natural. Just be cool. And what did I get for being cool? Well you see, there was a coupon in their sales flyer: spend $50 and get $10 off, or spend $75 and get $15 off. That should apply to the whole transaction. Well, for whatever reason (I can only assume good customer service, and because I was so understanding and cool about the problem), the manager opted to ring up the whole of my purchase in $75 increments and give me the discount each time. 🙂 Score! That’s not a normal thing and not how things are to be done, plus it’s a lot of little transactions, but hey… Always Be Cool. It pays off.

In the end, I we didn’t spend about $120 due to the lack of sales tax and then the nice manager. That was well worth it… both shopping today and well, being cool. 🙂

Went to a couple more stores.

Let’s just say Burlington Coat Factory aims for a different demographic. The sort of clothing they sell… nothing really there for my kids in terms of style.

Old Navy still has a store. I thought they were closing up and Levi’s was eliminating them for Gap stores or some such. But we went there and were able to round a few things out.

In terms of how much we truly didn’t spend, that’s hard to gauge. The original JCP receipt said we saved a few hundred bucks. My guess is that’s totalling the actual sticker prices vs. the price we paid. There was a lot of sales, 30% off, buy one get one free, buy one get one 50% off, clearance discounts (about 75% off original price). So yeah, I feel we did OK on things. But if I walked into the store during an off day, I’m not sure they’d still be selling any of that stuff for sticker price. So how much we really didn’t spend I don’t know, but the sales are aggressive this weekend and compared to what else I’ve seen I think we fared OK. Frankly in total we spent a little less than we normally do for kid clothes shopping, but I know we came home with more clothes for them and even Wife and I picked up a few things for ourselves. Plus then the flat out non-spending on the sales tax, the bonus discounts and such…all in all I think in the end we did alright.

And to boot? Had to run a little errand when I got home. Walking back past the grocery store I poked my head into the entrance just to try to buy a Coke from the vending machine. The Coke guy was filling up the machine and I asked if I could get one while he was filling it. He handed me a bottle. I asked how much I owed, he said “nothing… it’s cool.” Really? Yup. Wow… that was nice.

Always Be Cool.

Today was a good day. 🙂

Wish me luck

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Texas has a “sales tax holiday weekend” designed to help with back-to-school shopping.

It’s this coming weekend, Friday through Sunday.

We’ve never bothered with this. The main reason is we don’t want to deal with the crowds and chaos. And unfortunately, we fear people are going to be petty, rude, and ugly because they all want the best deals for themselves. We’ve experienced this during “big shopping weekends” before,  and we just choose not to deal with it. Plus since we homeschool, we don’t always need to be on the same clock and schedule as the rest of the world.

However, we decided to give it a try this time around. The kids need clothes, we know every retailer in Texas will be stocked up and prepared for this event (I even got an email from Waco Harley-Davidson promoting this weekend), and there will be sales and lots of aggressive pricing and discounting and so on as retailers jockey to attract customers. Then the sales tax alleviation on select items. The kids need the clothing they need so buy it now or later, they still need it. If we buy it now, I expect we’ll be able to lower our total bill. By how much I don’t know yet, but I expect any reduction in the overall bill will be welcome. 🙂

Being the planner I am coupled with my desire to get in and get out as fast as possible, we’ve figured out all that the kids need. We know what pants, shoes, socks, skirts, shirts, underwear, and whatever else they may need. We figured out what sizes of everything to get to minimize the slow down that comes with fitting rooms. Plus we figured out quantities. I think that’s a key factor at keeping cost controlled… you know you need 5 shirts, you get 5 shirts instead of saying “gosh at this price, we can get 7 shirts” which then just jacks up the total bill. If last night before you saw the prices 5 shirts was enough, then today after seeing the prices 5 shirts is still enough.

And going with the fact we aren’t on the same clock as the rest of the world, the plan is to go at the time we feel will have the smallest crowds: first thing Friday morning. Most people will have to be working, most people aren’t morning people. So if we can be on the road at 8 AM and done by lunch, awesome.

The geek in me is also wondering if the iPhone will come into play. If I’ll be able to comparison shop, look up prices, product reviews, or any other sort of on-the-spot information gathering.

Finally, I suspect there will probably be a man with a gun wandering through all these crowds, through all these retail establishments, being around lots of children…. and I’ll betcha nothing will come of it. 😉

So, onwards we go. Hopefully tomorrow won’t suck. 🙂