Last week I talked about how poorly I shot at sporting clays. When I lined my right eye with the barrel, everything is fine until I open the left eye. Then, I was looking at the side of the shotgun. That was weird, but I haven’t shot much from my shotgun in the last couple of years. So, I mounted the gun on the left and did the same thing (with same results) . Hmmm, I know that I am right eye dominant but something is wrong. Maybe it is gun fit? Watch the second video for some additional tips on how to deal with this problem.
Determining the dominant eye is one of the first things you should do as a shotgun shooter. Depending on which eye is dominant, then that should determine how you should actually shoot. Left eye dominant people should shoot left handed. Right eye dominant should shoot right handed.
The objective is to have the best sight picture. There is no way you can shoot accurately if you cannot sight down the barrel properly. It might be hard to switch shoulders but it is much better in the long run for accuracy.
I actually practice a little bit with both. It is a good exercise in case SHTF situations. I am pretty ambidextrous for the most part, but the sight picture is way off with long guns. That then leads to a pretty awkward position to see the sights properly. Handguns I noticed that it is a little easier to get a better sight picture, but my strength in the left hand is not nearly the same. Muscle memory will build though if you try.
End Your Programming Routine: As you know, I am enjoying my time in Spain right now so I am keeping it short. This is a very important part of long gun shooting. Start your kids off right or go ahead and make that shift if you need to. Your success rate will thank you.
I know, security experts say not to broadcast your absence over the internet. To that, I say that is good advice particularly for social media. But, either the people closest to us know that we are going or people on this site do not know precisely where we live. It is not that the house is going to be empty anyway.
Today, we are off to eight days in Spain (plus two travel days). I am probably going to do some degree of writing ahead here. But, I don’t think I will do eight days worth. I may opt to post some while I am travelling, but that is not likely. What I am saying is… be prepared for a gap.
This is an important trip. For one thing, the airplane tickets were almost $2000 a piece. This is my first vacation since 2019. Not that taking two years off wasn’t restful, it definitely was. This is my kid’s first time in Europe and leaving the continent. This will be all of our first time in Spain.
We are going to visit our exchange student and his family. We are going to stay pretty close to Barcelona except for a couple days in Majorica with no real agenda. We will see the sights in Barcelona, but most of it is going to be seeing the beach and re-connecting.
There is some anxiety on for the trip as well. From what I have read, for entry we need a passport and a vaccine card within the last 270 days. In order to come home, we will need a Covid test to be negative. I really don’t know what the mask situation or anything like that is currently.
End Your Programming Routine: I don’t want to dwell on the potential negatives. I am looking forward to taking some time off and an adventure. I am sure I will get some content out of this so, look forward to some insight from Spain later in the month. Until then, I am off!
I talked about the appearance remodel that began Monday of last week. We survived nearly a week without a kitchen. As I predicted, there will be a host of changes as a result. The floor is going to get painted as well as the cabinets. Not all of the the cabinets are going back up. And, I will have to build some shelves to replace the corner unit. The ceiling is going to be torn out with new lights and so on and so forth.
I am not upset, there is no point. But I am not totally happy. I think that it is wasteful to get rid of the cabinets and I think that we are adding less functional shelving to replace it. I am not a fan of painting wood for the most part either. The only thing that I can kind of understand is painting the floor. I will be interested to see how that works out.
There are some things that I just cannot care too much about. And this is going to be one of them. I think that it will be nice when it is done, I just don’t think that it is necessary. This is one of my not going to die on hills.
I think the other issue that I had is that this is going to keep the kitchen in disarray for some unknown time. Enough of that though. I have my own projects to worry about. plus we have deck work starting this week and the fence and now driveway soon.
End Your Programming Routine: After the kitchen is done, there will be one room remaining that hasn’t been touched since we moved in. That is what is the master bathroom. I wouldn’t be surprised if that is next on the list as it is 90’s ugly. Just like I like my furniture buy once cry once, I hope that removing the paneling and adding tile is one of those changes.
I was looking back on the years and I wax poetically about graduation at some point every year. This of course is the time that it happens. High school graduation was last Friday and the local university graduation was last Saturday. I love the hope that graduation represents. I love the party atmosphere, people seem to genuinely be in a good mood around town.
High school is really a stage gate. We went to some of the recent end of year awards ceremonies where seniors were recognized. Some of them put in a huge amount of time over the years, 1100 hours dedicated to one discipline. There was real emotion about the tenure ending. However, the exuberance about graduating is really like a caged animals getting released.
College graduation has a quite different feel. I would say it is more of a feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment. Because everyone has taken a different walk to get there, there is a different level for each person. Some have their parents, some have their kids, some are with friends because the family is far away and some are alone because that is the the way they wanted it. Each person knows that they have put in the work to meet the requirements to graduate. And so a new life begins.
Graduation is the transition between the school year and summer. When I was a kid, summer was the time to play baseball. I would say that it is was my favorite sport at that point, even though I really wasn’t good enough to make the ‘A’ team or the high school team. So, my participation in baseball waned as I got into high school. But, it doesn’t mean that I lost my appreciation for the game.
When I was younger and seemingly had all the time in the world. I would follow baseball. Later, I made attempts at some points but I guess I just couldn’t dedicate all the time. For a year or two we went to five or so minor league games before kids. The local team was a San Francisco Giants Single A team that was chocked full of future major leaguers like Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval. They tore up the Northwest Summer League. Unfortunately, that league was shut down in 2020 and never to return.
College baseball is somewhat big here as well. The Oregon State Beavers have won three national titles since 2006. I was listening to the Beavers play Vanderbilt last week and between the two schools they had five national titles this century. That is nearly a quarter of all the titles in that time frame.
Amazingly, they got in two games over the weekend (best two of three). Other events were not so lucky. There was an absolute deluge of rain Friday night which forced high school graduation inside. I have sat in the seats when it was raining before. It rained off and on all Saturday making college graduation hit an miss. And, baseball managed to miss it all. Last weekend, they played in rain that I thought for sure would postpone things.
This seems to be one of those years that maybe things will turn around July 4th. In the ten day forecast, I don’t see any highs above 73 degrees with more rain predicted. Yesterday, the high temperature was only 58 degrees. It feels more like Alaska than what we have been used to in the last five years. That being said, I remember a year in the 1990s that we didn’t get a temperature in the 80s until mid August.
End Your Programming Routine: In Oregon, you can’t stop for the rain. You just have to work around it. I guess what I can say is 20-30 years down the road you will remember bits and pieces about the graduation ceremony but not necessarily the weather. So, congratulations grads enjoy your moment and go Beavers.
It was 1988 when this slogan came out. Athletes like Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan were in their prime and leading the charge. I was in middle school and of course, it was the coolest thing to emulate or wear certain marketing slogans (like this one). We had no idea what it really implied and we were not the target audience, but it did leave an impression didn’t it?
Truthfully, I haven’t given it much thought in years. I did some quick research on current marketing slogans and I don’t see much that I actually recognize. ‘Just Do It’ is credited with turning Nike into a global apparel juggernaut. I am a little biased I suppose because I grew up in Oregon and it always seemed that way to me, but that is what the experts says. I think that there is something to that motivation. Stop thinking about everything and just try.
Well, I did it. I stopped putting excuses like researching the right host for scalability and just created a free account on castbox.fm. There may be some consequences in the future, but I think I will treat it like I did my earlier WordPress transition. I will build a beta library of podcasts that I will probably divert later. But, if I never get started, I will never get it done.
This podcast was inspired by some real stuff going on. I wanted to speak up, but I didn’t feel like it was going to make a change in the outcome. Plus, my thoughts were not truly organized. I had more to say so I did this podcast.
I am not promising that this is the end all or that I will switch formats but I think that I want to start adding at least a podcast a week. Maybe Fridays are the days to do that? Maybe this will change, but it actually took more work to make this podcast. Just writing the outline probably took as much time as actually writing a post. For now, I am going to just try to get familiar with the technical aspects and see how it goes.
There are still things to do to make this fly and I don’t even know what they all are. There is adding the RSS feed to the popular podcast vendors like Apple, iHeartRadio and Spotify. I should find some bumper music, learn more about editing, etc. But, I am not going to worry about problems that I don’t really have either. I would like to have a small catalog of podcasts before I really look into the distribution.
As an avid listener to podcasts, I am aware of some of the gotchas, especially free services. Maximum posts per month, maximum post size and total catalog limits. Then there is bandwidth throttling and random ad placement. So far, I have seen none of this but we will see what kind of problems come up with this arrangement. I am not opposed to paying, but I want to make sure that it is a business expense, not a personal expense.
End Your Programming Routine: It feels real. It is what I started this endeavor to do in the first place. Honestly, I think writing every day has helped me eliminate some of my fears but it also gave me a crutch not to move forward. I am happy that I finally broke that barrier. Looking forward to podcasting again.
It has been described as golf with a shotgun. This is the game called Sporting Clays. Every year, after the trap season is over, we do a fun shoot at a local facility.
Pretty good shooting from one of the coaches. At each station, there are two possibilities. One is called a report pair. The shooter says pull, the launcher fires one target and after the shooter shoots, the second target is launched and the shooter tries to shoot the second target. The second type is called a true pair. With that, two birds are launched at the same time.
The targets are different at each station. Sometimes they even come in behind you. It is a game that more closely mimics bird hunting where you don’t know where the target is going to come in. We shot fifty shots. That is like the nine hole golf equivalent. Official events would be 100.
It still took us three hours to finish. That was with five shooters and walking the whole time. So, you do have to allow some time, plus one hour there and back each. It is a commitment.
Most of us team members are not members at this particular range. I say this because 50 targets cost $26. Members get a better deal, but you do have to shoot quite a bit to break even because the membership is $125/year. One particular thing about this range is a pretty nice pro-shop. If you ever wanted to see a $20,000 shotgun they got them. You can rent shotguns too. I think if I was going to spend $3000 on a shotgun, I would want to see how it goes first. Rentals are $20-30 per session.
I shot very poorly. I did not get a good sight picture. Possibly something is going on with my eyes. I am right eye dominant and that doesn’t seem to be a problem with rifles. But, when I get a proper mount and open my left eye, I am no longer looking down the barrel, but the side of it. I need to do some experimentation with one eye. Or, it could be that I don’t have proper cheek relief.
I say this because I shoot my air rifle almost every day. And, I shoot with both eyes open. But, it does have a scope, so maybe that helps. I was trying to figure out what was going wrong as I was cleaning my shotgun yesterday and I figured out my sight picture was not what it is supposed to be. On Saturday, I thought that maybe my earmuffs were preventing my gun mount properly, but now I think something is not quite right with my eyesight. I will talk more about determining eye dominance next week.
End Your Programming Routine: I shot 5/50. That is pretty bad, My kids shot 15/50 ish and the best in our group shot around 25. I think last time I did this, I shot around 15 and I didn’t notice this problem. I had a lot of fun despite that and it is something to work on. So, looking forward to trying again. I think I will suggest it for a belated father’s day.
I am not sure when this changed exactly, maybe when I went back to work last year. But, it seems like our house is in a state of constant evolution. This job was originally scheduled late summer last year, then my father-in-law died and we have had a year of unplanned activities.
This week, we begin the journey of new countertops and replacing the faux brick paneling with subway tile. Since I am not doing the work, I guess what I think doesn’t really matter. Despite all of that, we will be inconvenienced without having a proper kitchen (as long as the job takes).
What bothers me about the process is what seems like the constant piling of cast-off housewares and furnishings and boxes or stacks of things sitting around. Ultimately, even though I am not doing the work, I end up having to deal with the job waste. Trips to the dump and donation centers, listing items for sale, etc. It seems like the ultimate wasteful, consumerism type behavior that is actually beginning to bother me.
We have shifted from the buy-once, cry-once mentality of furnishings to an evolving cycle of cheap(er) decor. Beds last five years, couches are three, chairs and rugs are replaced annually. The items don’t come in a truck anymore, they arrive in boxes that require assembly. This means that they are less durable. Then the old ones have to be moved out to the garage to become my problem. It seems so wasteful to me.
As an example, our first bar stools we bought were by IM David. Looking them up for writing this, I see that they are retailing for nearly $1500 a piece. We replaced them with $150 chairs a couple months ago. One of the two chairs didn’t swivel properly, so now we have three chairs. Our old chairs are dirty and worn by they are still very nice pieces that we could have invested the $300 into restoration. I am debating whether to sell them, restore them or donate them.
I am not against engineered furniture. Some of it can be very nice and there is a place for it. For one, they provide good value. For instance, my kids will likely be out of the house in less than three years. So furniture that doesn’t have to last a lifetime is probably a better deal. It also appears to scale properly. It seems like a lot of today’s furniture is so grotesquely sized. I am not a fan of wood/metal/glass integrated pieces either. I don’t like the ascetic.
I think this will be nice when it is done. It was my idea in the first place. But, was it necessary? No. is it really worth it? I guess we will see.
End Your Programming Routine: Where this is all going is that I am sure that once that work is done, there will be a whole bunch of other changes that will happen as a result. We were discussing hardware changes, our range is ailing, the cabinet finish is worn, my wife hates the lighting and false cealing and things like that. Expect more changes to come.
So, I mentioned my Adirondack chair idea recently. Before I fully committed, I wanted to see if the wood was even viable. I pried a couple representative boards off the fence to see what they would look like if I cleaned them up.
The fence is made from Western Red Cedar. I don’t know how long it has been up, but I would guess 30 years at least. While that is a familiar wood, it is not something I have done any kind of ‘fine(r) woodworking’ with. What I mean is as rough as the boards were, I wasn’t sure how good of chair they would make.
I think the nominal fence picket is 5/8″ thick. Once I surfaced the boards, they were more like 3/8″. Laminating three boards together, gave me approximately one inch of thickness. That means for the structure of the chairs, I will probably need two or three boards per piece. That is time to surface more boards, glue and clamp and waiting for them to dry.
Doing things in this way, means that the overall construction process will be much longer than the half day I was talking about when I introduced my thoughts. So, the initial idea was inspired by having the materials and the time investment is low. This gives me pause in actually committing to this. I really want to do it, but honestly, I cant invest the time (this summer).
There is a secondary concern as well. Since I am paying someone to dismantle the fence, I will only be able to get the boards if I am available when the work is done. I could ask to have them save panels, but I don’t want to end up with a bunch of extra waste either. Based on those factors, the go ahead with this project is still to be determined.
End Your Programming Routine: If this were strictly a business decision, the answer would be no. Time is too valuable and the timing is wrong. All things being equal, If I had a stack of lumber I would make time later. It is going to boil down to whether I am around to get the boards in the first place and then it will happen some time after I finish the siding this summer.
My kids are into music. I understand, I was once a high schooler in band. I suppose that it did build some appreciation for classical music as well. I definitely enjoyed playing music rather than listening to it anyway. We had a family outing over Memorial Weekend and it was a night at the Oregon Symphony.
I’m sure when you think of symphony, you think of fancy, expensive, a little bougie. I do, so I wouldn’t blame you. This was something different as a more approachable and quite smart way to draw in a new audience. This was the Oregon Symphony playing the score of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
This event drew in the Harry Potter fans, symphony goers, kids and the like. The audience was encouraged to interact with the movie by cheering or jeering however we saw fit. There were definitely people that had their Harry Potter garb on as well as people that appeared to be on dates. It was quite the mix.
The movie plays on the screen while the symphony plays the soundtrack to go along with it. At $50/ticket, it was the most expensive movie I have ever watched. I do have to say, since I have never seen the movie (I did read 75% of the book), I found myself focusing primarily on the screen and not the sound. I guess I would say, if you prefer the music then this experience may not be for you.
It seems like they have been doing this for some time, I just recently became aware of it. There will be another one in two months that is the music from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. We are already talking about whether we want to buy tickets or not.
Looking at other upcoming performances, it does seem like this is not the symphony of 30 years ago. In addition to what you might expect, the next performance is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony there is also a Beatle’s tribute as well as a Star Wars vs Star Trek concert. So, it does seem like they are trying to reach a broader audience.
End Your Programming Routine: We did get dressed up. We had to go to Portland and pay for parking. With that came a midnight stop at a 24 hour diner as well as a friend a piece for each of my boys. So, this was not an inexpensive outing. I couldn’t think of a more unique scenario to enjoy a holiday weekend.
This is the 500th post at Altf4. I have to say, I don’t think all of them were great and to some degree not all of them were (technically) real topics. There have been some occasions where I was having technical problems and just posted an update rather than a real topic. But, technically, this is the 500th blog entry.
My favorite things I have done so far are the series posts. I think number one was documenting the remodeling of my apartment in the spring and summer of 2020. I do look back at those posts sometimes when I want to check on some aspect or find a picture of the project. Number two was the analysis of 1984 followed by the analysis of the American Dream I completed earlier this year.
Individual posts that stand out to me as favorites are Lessons Delivering for Amazon, Memories of my Grandfather and teens and grief. There are lots of runner ups, particularly ones that I think have great pictures like my fishing, crabbing ones. I suppose the reason that all of those appeal to me is that they hold memories versus the opinion pieces. There is no real connection to the content.
What are the top questions I get asked? The truth is none. But, let’s pretend that I had fans I was being interviewed?
How do you come up with topics every day? I think it is helpful to have a bit of a formula. For instance, a series is useful in filling at least a day a week. Tacticool Thursday is a set placeholder and so I only need three days worth of topics at this point. I use projects on the weekend to generate content for the remaining days. When I get ideas, I stub them out to be filled in later as well.
What is your favorite part of writing AltF4? I like the creative outlet but it also helps me solidify my thoughts. When I was in a funk six weeks ago, writing about it helped me figure out what was going wrong. It also gives me pause
What is your least favorite part? I think because I do this on my own time, the quality and scale of what I do is less than what I want it to be. When I am writing heavy opinion pieces, I will often let them set a day or so before re-reading and publishing. Usually I don’t change much but I often see places where I wander or could streamline the argument. Because of time, I usually let them go. I would like to do larger and more intricate projects but time is usually a constraint.
Is there anything that you wish you hadn’t written about? No. But I do wonder sometimes if I come off too strong at times. I do give some thought to opinion pieces and wonder how this is going to come back to harm me in the future. I often take a second look at my initial stance before I write about it or at least publish it.
If you could make one change, what would it be? I wish that AltF4 was my career. There are lots of things I would like to do that I don’t feel like I have the luxury of doing without sacrificing all of my free time. I would like to build some other avenues of interaction, maybe some e-commerce store with stickers, I would like to refresh some of the sticky pages and organize some additional resources and links.
Any plans for the future? As of right now, nothing new is planned. This doesn’t mean that I won’t change my mind or find an easier way to make the changes I would like to see happen occur. As I have stated recently, doing things the way that I have been doing them has satisfied me to the point that it is comfortable.
Is there anything that you have learned doing this? Actually, I have learned quite a bit. I think I have the discipline to write a book if I wanted to, and I actually enjoy it. I have learned a little about PHP, SSL and web technology as well. I learned that I like having an open forum to do whatever I want to do.
Is there anything else that you want to add? I would like to thank my fans for submitting the questions and letting me answer them. Honestly, I know that this is a passé medium just like reading books or preparing family dinner every night. I guess that I am an old soul. Thanks for giving me your time not just today but every time you read.
I know that growth requires change. In my head at least, I thought I was practicing what I thought was a proper business practice. And that is, keep generating content while the conversion to the new thing is going on. I suppose the reality is that I don’t have the bandwidth to really do both. I get kind of irritated when somewhere closes down temporarily to make a change. My thinking was, I don’t see anything wrong with the way it is. This is the reality of a one man show.
As a result of trying to do something extra for post 500, I have spent some time over the last couple weeks to revamp the static pages. I have consolidated the Left Coast Cellars Culinary Book Club to one page instead of a yearly page. I repurposed the other pages for umbrella subjects of media and influences. Hopefully, those pages will be a little more evergreen and useful and less temporal than they were in the past.
So, with that, I am not going to make any additional promises on the future at this point. I am going to keep writing until I decide to do something different. That something could be that I just don’t want to spend my time doing this anymore. But, I don’t really foresee that at this point.
End Your Programming Routine: It is no secret that I am a routine listener to The Survival Podcast. In one of Jack’s many business building routines, the advice is to do things routinely. Very few are going to show up to something that has five entries or episodes and post randomly. I took that advice to heart, so that part I have down. What I still need lots of help on is the marketing and monetization components.
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