The results from the ISPC match I shot last Sunday are in. I’ll get them posted on the Lewiston Pistol Club website soon. I came in 4th out of 10 which is in the top half. I’m pretty pleased considering the lack of practice. I did best in the clasifier (DVC: Vis = Power) and came in second–four Pepper Poppers and two IPSC targets at 10 (?) yards. I shot all the steel and got all “A’s” on the paper (eight shots total) in 5.37 seconds for a hit factor of 7.4488.
Category Archives: Home Life
Xenia and milk
I meant to post this story the night (two days ago) it happened but I got distracted and then forgot. I sometimes give Xenia a bad time about being a klutz, which she isn’t really. But there have been a couple of incidents with milk and then the time she walked into a support post in the grocery store that might lead one to think otherwise. She tells the milk stories. This last time I ended up taking a quick shower and changing all my clothes–from my socks to my shirt. Everyone else at the table escaped every drop.
Serenity trailer 2 and Stargate SG-1
My son James and I have been eagerly awaiting the release of Serenity–now scheduled for September 30th. There is a new trailer out.
In the meantime we have been watching Stargate SG-1 on DVD. We finished up season one a couple days ago and just finished something like episode 10 on season two. I saw Stargate in the theater years ago and wasn’t all that impressed. It just didn’t deliver on the potential for some reason. When James brought home the series I was skeptical but the first couple of episodes got things straightened out pretty good and other than the one glaring problem of everyone speaking English throughout the universe it’s pretty good. We are enjoying it.
Xenia’s cloud pictures
Wow! Another guy I worked for is in the news
When I went to work for Microsoft, on contract, back in ’95 I wrote video drivers for Direct X. My friend Eric Engstrom did the hiring but it was for a position where I reported to Craig Eisler. As I posted yesterday Eric just sold his most recent company, Wildseed, to AOL. I didn’t know it, but one of the people involved in the sale at AOL was–Craig Eisler. Details here but the interesting portion to me is this:
Even before the deal, the ties between Wildseed and AOL were clear. AOL, based in Dulles, Va., recently appointed Craig Eisler to the position of AOL Wireless general manager and senior vice president.
And if you want to know even more about these characters read the book Renegades of the Empire. It’s a fascinating book, but then I was there for it and saw things from the inside looking out. And the stories in the book that you might think were too wild be to true have actually been distorted in such a way to make them more tame than they really were. In reality there were far more wild stories to be told such as when I reported a serious bug I had found to Craig and he kicked a hole in the wall. Or the motorcycle peeling out in the hallway–melting a hole in the carpet. Or the “less than legal” fireworks display on the Microsoft campus (I had NOTHING to do with that! This is readily determined from the fact there were no windows broken, no craters, and no mushroom shaped clouds). Or one morning about 2:00 AM hearing, in the next hallway over, cursing, pounding, and what sounded like the tinkling of shattered glass (it was the falling keys from the keyboard Craig was pounding against desk). Or when the “man with a gun” showed up to visit his ex-girlfriend in a different building Craig decided my office was a good place to visit–never mind that it was against the rules for anyone to have a gun on campus and there was little I could have done to protect anyone from someone with a gun.
I even have a Craig Eisler quote in my quote database:
NO! END OF DISCUSSION! SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!
Craig Eisler
Microsoft Software Development Lead
August 1995
(Yelling at a contract programmer who wanted to add hundreds of lines of new code to a project after a code freeze and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer).
And no, I wasn’t the programmer he was yelling at.
And another quote from that same era:
I would have gone postal… but I didn’t have enough ammo.
Josh Baker
August 26, 1996
Explaining why he decided to take a two week vacation in Greece.
He said that in a manner which could have been taken as a joke, but it also could have been taken as something other than a joke. I had been to the range with Josh and his shooting skills were not particularly good but they don’t need to be if you are just going to be blasting away at “fish in a barrel”. About two weeks after Josh returned from vacation he was fired–I was at a state of high alert for a month or so until I knew he had found another job.
Yes, there was a lot of stress there in those days but I thrive on stress and my first few years at Microsoft were among the happiest and most exciting of my time in corporate America.
Connection lost
Yeah. I know. My blog and nearly all my websites went down a little after 7:00 PDT. It was the connection my ISP has with Sprint. I’m on the same side of the break as my websites so I can update as desired but only about half the people in Moscow Idaho can view them. Heavy sigh… at least my income (my wife just went off to her second day of work at her new job) isn’t dependent on having connectivity like some people.
Update: From my ISP:
9:42 update. A fiber optic cable is cut between here and Potlatch.
We came back online about 11:15.
Smoke
The picture below was taken from the sidewalk across the street from my house a few minutes ago. That cloud is smoke from a fire about 50 miles away.
Click on the picture for a higher resolution version.
This fire made the news:
AOL buys Wildseed
A friend of mine, Eric Engstrom who I quote occasionally, just sold his company to AOL. As Ry put it in an email to me, he “escapes again”. Ry and I both used to work for Eric at Chromium Communications. I was his first employee at Chromium. Chromium morphed into Gitwit and then into Wildseed in a series of restructurings. The details of the sale aren’t public but I hope Eric gets enough out of it to pay off his debts and at least get back the money he put into it–which was a lot.
IPSC today
It’s been months since I went to an IPSC match. The stars just wouldn’t align themselves to allow it with the Boomershoot, troubles at work and home life all contributing factors. Finally there is nothing holding me back except a gun that is filled with lint and dust from being carried so much without use or cleaning and virtually no practice during that time. I’ll clean it when I get to the range. The match itself will be “practice”. I’m hoping I’ll be in the top half of the competitors.
Off again
Barb and I have been home for a few hours now and we are about to leave again for a few more days of vacation. Earlier this week we visited Washington State (Benton City), Oregon (Madras and Mt. Hood), Nevada (McDermitt, Virginia City, and Tahoe), and California (Carmichael).
Barb asked why I talk about the “compound” and my “arsenal” in previous posts about leaving home with the kids in charge. It’s because back in the late 90’s when I worked at Microsoft every time some gun owner would get arrested the police would pile all his guns and ammo on the front lawn for the media to take pictures of. And the news people would talk about his “arsenal”. If the guy was in a little bit of a rural area and had a few outbuildings then they would say he had a “compound”. It became a joke with the Microsoft Gun Club. The media was choosing words to demonize gun owners. We adapted the words and made fun of them. I am just continuing in that fashion. Just like the “Red-necked, knuckle dragging, Neanderthal” subtitle. You neutralize the people who attempt to demonize you buy adopting words prior to them using them on you. So…
Again the kids, dogs, and cat are in charge of the “arsenal” and the “compound” while we are gone. Xenia will post the Quote of the Day until I get Internet access again.
Quote of the day–Nancy Amos
You’ve got to be kidding. They said Joe was dishonest? Joe is the most honest person I know.
Nancy Amos
I can’t believe the timing
Barb and I got back into civilization tonight and found, after some difficulty, an Internet connection. Much to my surprise I found this email waiting for me (magazine and writer name deleted for now):
—–Original Message—–
Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2005 6:21 AM
To: JoeH@boomershoot.org
Subject: an interview with XXXX magazineMy name is XXXX XXXX and I am a freelance writer for XXXX magazine.
We are working on a story about people who got fired for blogging. If
you were fired for blogging (it was unclear from the one post I saw on
another website) would you be interested in doing an interview? If so,
email me back with your name, age, where you live, what you wrote that
got you fired and where you got fired from.Thanks.
This is a national magazine everyone with two or more functional brain cells has heard of. I wrote them back saying I would be glad to be interviewed and will send them the news release when it goes out tomorrow afternoon. I also put my previous employer on the Bcc: line.
Quote of the day–Dow Scott
Joe dishonest?
Dow Scott
Vacation.
Barb and I are off on a on well deserved vacation now. I’ll have one of my kids post the quote of the day until I get internet connection again. Have a great weekend everyone!
Postal pistol match
Here is a link to Match #1. Swatting flies, standing, un-supported, at 30 feet with your handgun. Results due August 8th.
I’ll be on vacation a lot of this time and not sure I be able to participate. But I’m going to try.
Geocaching on Moscow Mountain
Barb and I went to Moscow Mountain for some geocaching this morning. It was a most successful and rewarding trip. First we replaced the Moscow Mountain High ammo can with the bullet hole in it:
Then we found Moscow Mountain Higher which we were not able to find on our last trip out on June 4th:
More pictures can be found here.
Xenia is coming home
I’m off to pick her up in Colfax. She has been gone for two weeks. We really missed her. Everytime she has called she says she misses her cat but never anything about missing her parents. I offered to bring her some of his body parts when I pick her up.
Update: No hug for me when I picked her up. No hug while we were at Wal-Mart. No hug when we arrived at home–except for her cat. After her cat got a hug then I got something that technically could be considered a hug lasting a few milliseconds. Does anyone have a pattern for making a pair of gloves, size large, out of the hide of one large domestic cat?
Job security has it’s risks as well as it’s rewards
I received this in the latest news email from the University of Idaho here in Moscow where I live.
Lawrence Johnston, a UI physics professor emeritus, traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to recall the 1945 detonation of the first nuclear weapon. The July 14 symposium marked the 60th anniversary of Trinity, the first manmade nuclear explosion. Johnston witnessed the successful early morning test July 16, 1945, and the later use of nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. He is believed to be the only person to witness all three. He lives in Moscow with his wife, Millie.
Johnson, if I recall correctly, invented and received a patent on the detonator for one of the bombs. He also, again if I recall correctly, built a lot of the instrumentation used to record the effects in the planes that dropped the bombs. And since they hadn’t asked him to teach anyone else how to run the instrumentation when it came time to drop “the big ones” on Japan he was the only person that knew how to operate the equipment. Whoops! He’s was required to go on both missions.
Wolfman’s Cabin
A few months ago I was asked to help a couple of college kids blow up a car for a movie they were making. Ry and I agreed and then as the time grew near things changed for the kids and the project fell apart. I still chat online with one of them occasionally and he has a new project he is working on. It’s called Wolfman’s Cabin. It’s described as a horror movie and I don’t like horror movies. But from talking to the director this would be a movie I would probably see anyway. It’s more than just horror…
James is home
James came back from his visit with friends in Oregon. He brought a bunch of fish with him. They went fishing in a nearby river and James did his first successful fishing. Did he like fishing? “It was boring when the fish weren’t biting. When there was one on the line it was kinda fun.”
Had we, his parents suggested he should try fishing he would have put on his shirt that says, in big letters across the front:
Keep out of direct sunlight
Then he would have glared at us as if we had suggested he give up his video games.