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September 2, 2021 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

September 2, 2021 /

As I talked about last week, I had two lessons. This is the second one from my recent experiences. It also might be a little juvenile, but I have found myself in this position in the past as well so let’s get into it.

I haven’t written about it much, maybe not at all. I am a member of the Brotherhood of the Protective Order of the Elks (or Elks). The biggest reason that I wanted to do so was to get involved in the local trap range. The Elks sponsor the local high school trap team by providing the facility to shoot. My son is part of the high school trap team.

Our local state representative is also an Elk in our local lodge. He hosts an annual campaign fundraiser at the trap range and the trap team helps operate the event. I wanted to help out but I had to work that Saturday so I dropped my son off while I went back home. When I went to pick him up, I found him with his shotgun in pieces.

When I asked my son what was going on, he said that his shotgun was not functioning. He took it apart at the gun club and parts were all piled on the ground. People were trying to put the furniture away and clean up to close down the facility and event. I was finally able to persuade him that we should do this at home and not on the ground.

On the ride home, I was trying to figure out what was the problem and why he was so disparate. I got that the shotgun wasn’t cycling so he cleaned it and then it wasn’t firing. He told me that a pin in the trigger group occasionally works it’s way out causing the trigger not to work. He was trying to get the trigger group out at the club to determine if he had already lost the pin when he was cleaning it.

As it turns out, he did lose the pin somewhere on the grounds of the trap club. We probably ought to take a swing at looking for it again just in case but I don’t know where to look and he has been working at night since this happened. Fortunately, Brownells stocks the pin and it is $4 to replace.

I have been guilty of being frustrated and taking apart a firearm in the past. One time I lost a spring to pistol because it wasn’t firing properly and I took it apart in the woods. I have since learned to stop and do things in an appropriate time and place. Sometimes, part are not so readily available as this time.

End Your Programming Routine: In contrast to the story above, sometimes field repairs have to be done. It is a matter of weighing the risk vs the reward of the situation. I would highly encourage that evaluation is done before something irreplaceable goes flying off into the unknown. I even worry about stuff being torn down too long in a controlled environment; stuff gets moved or piled on top of. Another good practice is put the parts in a small box or something to keep them together. I am expecting the pin early next week.

September 1, 2021 – Wake Me Up When September Ends

September 1, 2021 /

Continuing on the theme of music as a distraction today, can you believe that today is September 1? My kids are going to a half day orientation for school today and tomorrow. The summer is for all intents and purposes over. As my wife and I were talking last night, we did some fun things but all-in-all it was another Covid summer. I can say that my kids are looking forward to going to school and having a little bit of normalcy even if it isn’t.

When I was looking up songs to help with the playlist for my father-in-laws funeral last week, I was reading on one song list that ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ was the number one grief song. It was apparently written about the passing of Billie Joe Holliday’s father in 1982. When you read some of the comments, they are all people hurting, except for today when people just want to comment and be silly.

It is interesting that the video does not actually match the true intent of the song. It does however have current relevance. We don’t know the true story, but it seems like the boy enlists and ends up in either Iraq or Afghanistan where he becomes a casualty. We don’t know his fate, but it seems like the parallel reality to this story is the girlfriend waiting and worrying about the boyfriend.

I am going to diverge for a paragraph here. I was sickened and horrified by September 11, 2001. But to start a twenty year war with two theatres and all of the senseless death, destruction and cost was a total waste. In 2001, I was at the apex of my Republican beliefs but I was on the fence about war. Now, in 2021 I am totally against any form of aggression outside of self defense. I am hard pressed to find vengeance as justification for war. This was George W Bush’s war, but Obama campaigned in 2008 for ending it which he never did, Trump actually set the withdrawal date and Biden finished it. I feel really bad for what is currently happening in Afghanistan but we cannot correct a wrong with another wrong (by staying in country).

I am not sure when things will return to normal at my house. September 13, my wife has tickets to return to Texas to support her mom with cancer treatment. Everything is so much up in the air at this point because there is no return date on that trip. There is a real possibility that this is another trip ending in bad news. There is another possibility that this trip is not just two weeks like the last one. We are going to do our best to stay strong and normal as possible.

You can probably tell from my writings over the last couple of weeks that this family is still grieving. The funeral service was a milestone which I don’t see as the end but rather the beginning of the cycle. People were so focused on the logistics of the service that there was no time to grieve. Now that is over, emotion is boiling.

But, I don’t want to make another post strictly about grief. Sometimes I want to hear a certain song, I will look it up on YouTube and then I let it play. The problem is that when you do that too much, the AI starts to develop a pattern and then it goes into the same genre loop every time. Sometimes I use a different browser so I can try to fake that it is me. I like to have some variety from time to time. It is kind of like Chicago, maybe I want one song and not everything in that particular genre or artist.

In my previous job, I used to frequently create a Friday playlist. You can see it on my YouTube channel still. They were songs that I thought captured the week or were funny or silly. After I set the initial list, I would open it up for the rest of the team to contribute. Sometimes they did and sometimes not, but we would usually put it on while we were working Friday afternoons.

Maybe I should have been a DJ? I am not deep into all of the facts about bands and songs but rather the connection music has with emotion. There is something about the senses of sound and smell that have a more triggering connection to memory more so than sight. It is probably because we are constantly using our eyes, but when we isolate our other senses, then we are specifically focused on that particular pathway.

End Your Programming Routine: If we are not careful, we will wake up in a few short days and it will be October 1. I don’t want to skip through the month, I want to get through the month otherwise we will be at the exact same place as we are now.

August 31, 2021 – Distraction Through Music

August 31, 2021 /

There are so many things going on in the world at the moment, it is hard to stay focused on the best ones to talk about. There are a number of things that are heavy on my heart and those tend to be the ones that are pushed to the forefront. I think I am going to go in a different direction today.

I will say that the American evacuation of Kabul is my generation’s evacuation of Saigon. The war in Afghanistan has lasted almost twenty years and it ended about the same fashion as Vietnam. I don’t really want to get into politics but what a sad situation that we created and then left.

Clearly I have been pretty quiet on Covid in the last couple of weeks. This state has lost it’s mind and the majority of the people have joined in the ‘hate week’ celebration. We have counties passing even more restrictive measures. Again, I don’t want to get into politics.

Harvest season is really kicking in. I have a bunch of plums planned to make some wine. My wife wants to put up some peaches and pears for the next year. Our chance to do so will be in the next week. School is starting next week. We are barreling into hunting season, the fall and then the holidays. Right now, the plan is that my wife is going to be out of town for most of it.

A few months ago, this was planned as a period of celebration. We had a tickets and a family trip planned to go to Silverwood. My wife had four different days of the state fair tickets, that we were looking forward to. We did get one day where the primary plan was to see Chicago and we are going next Sunday.

Chicago is one of those bands that I have always liked, I suppose that it is my 1980s childhood. Depending on where you fall on the generational gap, most of their top 40 songs were released in the 1970s. But, it is also a band that I had to be in the mood to listen to. The funk was not really my era and the melodrama of the 80s is often times kind of moody.

It really wasn’t until I saw them last Friday that I really appreciated the band. What I was thinking as they were on the stage was when was the last time there were musicians playing brass instruments as part of a rock bank? And more so, a major rock band? I looked up a couple stats and it said that Chicago has the most top 40 hits of any band in the 1970s. Chicago was really the grand finale of big band, jazz and funk and the transition into popular rock, something that had lasted for around 40 years..

There are those kind of seminal moments like Guns n’ Roses full orchestra that are combining two unique elements in a way that hasn’t been done, done for a long time or just doesn’t mix. And when done right, like this case you get it. The primary reason for going aside from already having tickets was that it was an homage to my father-in-law as this was his era of music for sure. We enjoyed the concert which was primarily the earlier side of band but it was OK as we felt a healing connection for that hour.

End Your Programming Routine: I think of music as a vehicle to jog memories of happy times. Maybe I didn’t have the same kind of memories as my wife does, but I could imagine the feel good part of being a seventies youth or young adult. I still prefer the 80s part more, but I came away with a different perspective about Chicago. That is to say that I enjoyed the concert.

August 30, 2021 – We Made it Through

August 30, 2021 /

I am all over the place this morning. It doesn’t happen very often, but today I completely scrapped what I initially wrote and started over. It was an emotionally and physically draining weekend with the funeral of my father-in-law Frank. I think part of my indecisiveness this morning has to do with the juxtaposition of feelings that multiple people have. I will try to explain.

Before the service, my wife was saying that she was feeling light headed and feint. This was after waking up with a headache and an upset stomach. I felt it was anxiety which she denied it but I know but having had all those symptoms related to anxiety myself, I am almost sure of it. Things calmed down a bit as we readied to get to the funeral home and arranged all of the memorabilia and prepared for the service, until my mother-in-law showed up.

She was a wreck, I had never seen her so despondent. She couldn’t walk without two people’s help, she couldn’t breathe, I don’t think that she was even aware of what was going on around her during the service. That was definitely anxiety. We weren’t even sure if my brother-in-law Juaquin was going to attend the service and he wasn’t on the docket to speak but he did. I don’t want to diverge too much, however there has been lots of strain between my brother-in-law and the rest of the family including my mother.

When I spoke to my wife August 13, I told her that after a prayer for the family, it was on my heart to try and reconcile with Juaquin. I knew that I wasn’t living my values by trying to block out my brother-in-law. As Frank was the family peacekeeper he was the one that always looked after his son and he would want that if at all possible. I decided that I would try to apologize and see if we could move past our differences but had not had a chance to do so yet.

As was customary for Juaquin, he wanted to have the last word and inserted himself into the program after all of the eulogy was completed while the service was in progress. He spoke the truth. The truth was that Frank did not have any desire for a bunch of fuss of a funeral. It was an angry kind of Malcolm-X like tone, nevertheless it was true. What was also true was that my wife also spoke truth. She spoke the words ‘were you hungry?’, ‘were you cold?’, ‘what do you need?’. This funeral was not for Frank, this was for his wife to appease the guilt of his death, it was for his family and friends to see him one more time.

There is still a lot of hurt and hangups here. There is misplaced blame of why and where and all that. Trust me, there is much more to the back story than I have relayed, but it is personal and inappropriate for me to write about. Unfortunately, all the plans post the funeral were changed because it was just too raw for some and we needed to spend time on healing. With that, we spent most of yesterday cleaning up and delivering leftover flowers to people that had attempted to help the family post the funeral.

End Your Programming Routine: I did say that I was sorry to Juaquin for the past and that I would like to move forward. He accepted it lukewarmly, I think that was about the best I could hope for and didn’t leave a lot of room for more than that. At least I can say that I will try to be more empathetic and look through his eyes before judgement and typecasting.

August 27, 2021 – 1984 3:4-5

August 27, 2021 /

Technically, there is one chapter remaining . In my book at least, there is an appendix the talks about ‘Newspeak’ as well as an afterward which is someone else’s opinion. I think I will probably skip talking about those things unless a bombshell comes up. For now, I am not reading ahead so that my thoughts are not influenced unduly by someone else.

These two chapters are more rehabilitation. Winston still knows everything is wrong on a subconscious level but has accepted that there is nothing that he can do about it. He is able to repeat the ‘facts’ as truth but still balks at believing those facts.

We finally got to the answer of what happens in Room 101. It seems that this is the final stage in rehabilitation. When Obrien says you know what Room 101 is he means that you know your greatest fear. Apparently, so does Obrien.

I think that I will skip the concepts today. Partly because I could try to make a thinly veiled comparison between your greatest fear and compliance. But also partly because I really don’t buy it. I believe what I said previously that torture could elicit any kind of answer be it true or false. I am not sure why this particular method or encounter would be any different.

The second reason is that I really didn’t see anything new. Maybe I should have combined the last three chapters together… moving on. I did see one thing that I thought stuck out. Winston is re-enforcing what he knows as facts on a tablet. The last thing that he wrote was “God is Power”.

That was puzzling to me. I thought that this world like most totalitarian regimes was agnostic. In fact in the last chapter, Winston proclaimed that he believed in the spirit of man and not in God. I suppose that this statement was written to prove that he has accepted the facts. But why choose that particular statement when there are so many others throughout the book?

I do not want to speculate why Orwell chose this phrase at this point, but my opinion is that it was deliberate. I think that we will possibly come back to this in the overall analysis of the book.

End Your Programming Routine: As we are nearly to the end of the book, I find myself less dogmatic on the world of 1984. I am struggling with where the ending is going in context of Parts One and Two. It very well be that the message is the game is rigged and individualism cannot coexist with power. But if that were really the case, then why even have a Part 3? This seems to suggest that once we accept the reality then things will better. I guess I will continue to try and reconcile in the next couple of weeks.

August 26, 2021 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

August 26, 2021 /

Finally, there is something to report on and there are two stories on both ends of the spectrum. I will report on them probably in two different instances because there are some life lessons coming.

Last Friday, I took my dad to the range. He inherited a rifle from his uncle who was his lifelong sportsman’s partner. They hunted an fished together my dad’s whole life. And when I was a kid, I was there too. My great uncle Art didn’t have any children of his own so he kind of adopted my dad as a surrogate son.

Last year when I took my dad to the range, we started to take a look his newly inherited Winchester Model 100 .308. The first problem was that my dad had taken the scope off for some reason, I think he said to clean everything thoroughly. He took a couple of shots and it was no where near the target, so we tabled it for later as he needed a bore sight to get started.

Fast forward to this trip. The goal was to get that rifle sighted in and also to try some newly loaded 30-06 in a different rifle and make sure that rifle was sighted in as well. Last year, we had kind of left it in a ‘I think it is OK state’. We were going to see about getting it on the 50 yard target first and then move to the 100 yard target.

The first thing that happened was that when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Come to find out, there was no cartridge in the chamber. After some fiddling around, he got one in the chamber and fired. I saw no trace of it around the target or the ground. He fired again, I saw it hit the top of the 100 yard berm. I asked ‘Are you Sure you are aiming the the 50 yard target?’ He said yes. I had no way of knowing for sure, but I estimated that he was 12-24″ high (as you shoot over the 50 to hit the 100). A couple more shots and I saw one hole on the paper at the 100 yard target.

We did more adjusting and shooting, probably after 10 shots my dad suggested that I should try it as we were still nowhere close to getting on the target. I looked down the barrel and it was clearly pointed at the 100 yard target, not the 50. So we gave up, the rifle would need to be bore sighted and we would have to try another day.

Then we took out his other rifle, it was a more than 50 year old Remington 722 30-06. My dad had loaded some new rounds over the winter. After the first shot, the bolt got stuck and the cartridge casing got stuck in the rifle. Again more fiddling, and we got the case out. Long story long here but about every other shot we had a stuck cartridge case. I suggested that maybe we needed to table it and that I wasn’t confident that rifle should be used to for hunting until the sticking case situation could be understood better.

This isn’t a story to disparage my dad. But, between the hobbling out to get the targets or the bolt manipulation or the confusion at what target he was aiming at what I saw was that my dad was becoming elderly. I knew in my head that he is getting into his upper seventies now. But I really hadn’t seen the signs of the transition until this trip.

Hopefully, it happens to us all. But, it also means that I need to pay more attention to what is going on. I definitely get some of my stubbornness from him, hopefully we will be able to work together to make this the best possible life phase transition.

End Your Programming Routine: I guess you can say that I am fortunate to have my dad around at this point. And I know from my wife’s side of the family that dealing with aging parents can have some challenges. Sometimes decisions or lack of action can have consequences. The silver lining is that I am planning another range trip with my dad to get these things ironed out before hunting season.

August 25, 2021 – My Favorite Kind of Fishing

August 25, 2021 /

I am going to talk about a subject that I don’t think I have ever talked about, fishing. When I was in my late teens, I thought that I wanted to try and go fishing once a month throughout the year. That ship has long sailed and this is the first time that I have actually gotten out in probably three years.

So, what is my favorite kind of fishing? The answer is the one that I can do. My first pole was one that my great grandfather gave to me. I still have it, but it has been retired since I have broken the tip multiple times. He died before I was born, my dad said that he was really excited about it and wanted me to have this fishing pole. I still have and use the Mitchell 300 that was put on it when I was about 6.

My first fish was pretty fuzzy but I was young somewhere around three. I remember running around that I got one on a family camping trip to Crescent Lake. As youth, we used to fish the summer salmon run at least once a year. There was also typically a Memorial day outing at Green Peter reservoir for kokanee. My dad usually caught more even though we were using the same rigging.

I have never drifted away from my love of fishing. I guess that you might say that I reprioritized other things above it. I always feel a little guilty about just leaving for a Saturday all day when there are always so many things to do. In my last job, I organized a ‘lunch time fishing’ outing to one of three close ponds (within 10 mins of the office). I would probably do it once a month when the weather was agreeable. I always said that anyone could do it, just say ‘I am doing this, this date, this time’ and go but no one ever did even though I usually got between 5-8 people every time I did it.

One of the activities that we did while my wife was in Texas was to go on a quick one hour (of) fishing trip. It was a pond that I used to go to when I was a kid from time to time. My brother and I could ride our bikes in about 15 minutes and get to it. The pond is stocked and heavily fished in the spring. I like to go when no one is there and I don’t care about keeping the fish, just the activity. It’s nice to catch a few sunfish just for fun.

We didn’t do it a lot, but every two or three years maybe my father-in-law and a few family or friends would take a rock fish/crab charter. Often, we would end the trip with a fish fry and crab boil with everyone from the family at the coast. Sometimes it was for Father’s Day or during birthday week. That night, it was a good get out and enjoy nature a little bit.

This was another activity that we did to bring a little more healing to us. Aside for the mosquito bites a few days later, it is definitely on the to-do again list.

End Your Programming Routine: There are a number of ponds and rivers within thirty minutes. There really isn’t a good excuse to not take an hour occasionally in the evenings. Like I said, I usually don’t plan to bring anything home. It is just some quiet time.

August 24, 2021 – It’s Getting Late and I Did the Unthinkable

August 24, 2021 /

I am going to be short again as I spent most of my ‘free’ time moving computers around in my office. One of the many reasons I am short on time is that I need to spend time collating through my data to find pictures for the funeral slide show.

The funeral home setup a Facebook group for people to participate and interact. I think it is a great idea for most people. My problem is that I wanted to get to some of the pictures, which required me to sign up for a Facebook account. Considering my mostly hate relationship with Nextdoor and my ambivalence for LinkedIn, I really dread seeing more junk mail clog up my inbox. I am scared to death that someone is going to see me here and try to draw me in. I wasn’t quite the ‘I don’t have a cell phone type’ but I never wanted to participate in Facebook.

End Your Programming Routine: I have always believed in doing the right things for the right reasons. I do not want Facebook collecting my data and I find most of the interactions somewhere between ridiculous, appalling and trite. All that said, sometimes it is a useful tool. For that, I had to do it for the right reasons but don’t count on seeing me there any time soon.

August 23, 2021 – Moving at a Snail’s Pace

August 23, 2021 /

This is going to be quick, I hope. Part of my haste is that I have been separated from my computer while I am trying to reconfigure my office. I have worked in it about a week and have already decided to make some changes. I suppose that it is a good thing that I only partially moved in anyway.

First problem, I didn’t like the transition between the carpet and the hard floor. It took some lifting effort to get my chair on a different surface. It seems to roll fine when I am on the carpet, so I want to move the carpet completely under the desk.

That leads me to my second problem. I didn’t like my chair completely in front of the door. It was fine and I could get out, but also see problem one. I needed to tear everything down so I could move the carpet from under the door and other furniture in my office.

The third problem is a little more difficult problem but it relates to problem two as well. I have discovered that with the door closed, the temperature starts to climb up into the eighties. I guess that I got the insulation right, but it means that I crack the door periodically to get a little cooling. For the long term test, we will see what winter temperatures feel like. For now, it is very manageable.

Knowing that I wanted to make these changes has kept me from fully moving in. Not to say that I have had a lot of extra time as I had to work all weekend as well as being a ‘single’ parent.

Not everything is a problem. I have enjoyed having my stereo receiver in the room with quality speakers and good sound playing while I am working all day long. I like the dedicated space and having what I need where I need it. I was able to setup two monitors and use a dedicated keyboard which is really nice. I am looking forward to my final vision of surround sound and adding a couch just for fun.

One month at a time, I plan on adding Thunderbolt 3 docking stations for my two primary work laptops. Then I can add a KVM switch and I can then do all the wire management and clean up all the wires that that are strung all over the place.

End Your Programming Routine: There is no substitution for experience. I am not saying that I foresaw these issues, I just plain wasn’t able to anticipate the problems. Now that I have the foundations set, I am able to finally start moving everything in. Overall first impressions is that I am really happy.

August 20, 2021 – 1984 3:3

August 21, 2021 /

So we are to another Friday; at least this one is a little less dramatic than the last. And we are through another chapter in 1984, I think that there are four more to go. I might even combine a couple short ones, we will see.

In this chapter we see more of the torture process with Winston and are revealed some of the slogans and their meanings, at least to Obrien. I am going to surmise that the purpose of this chapter is for Orwell to explain his intent to using these these slogans throughout the book.

Early on in the chapter one of the first lines are the three stages to the process Winston is undergoing. They are learning, understanding and accepting. The last chapter was about learning and this one will be accepting.

The use of power: I think by far and away that this is the ‘how’ of all of this world that Orwell has conceived. There are so many intersecting ideas with slogans and quotes to re-enforce the idea that power is the most important mechanisms to perpetuate the party. Here are a couple to support what I am saying.

  • The party seeks power for its own sake
  • Power is inflicting pain and humiliation
  • Power is not a means but an end

What more can you say about this? It seems obvious that any regime is going to exert power to propagate its values. I don’t have any doubts that China uses power when it deems necessary. The State of Oregon is going to exert power over businesses to enforce the new mask mandates, as they stated so.

I have heard it another way and that is power is force. Winston states that he believes in humanity and that they will somehow eventually overthrow the Party. The only card that really hasn’t been addressed in this entire 1984 scenario is that absolute exertion of power can never be exercised otherwise it will likely fail. The counterpart to power is compliance. Either appropriate force must be exerted for compliance or there will be no one left to have power over or the system itself will become corrupt and fail within.

I think the idea that all the high party members are complete and exact ideologues is extremely unlikely. But, this is a story after all. Once we extrapolate the concepts and overlay them into our own world today, we can still get a lot of good insight into human nature.

Ideas are eternal: Orwell makes a point to that highlight humanity’s ultimate finiteness. We finally hear the definition of ‘Slavery is Freedom’ and that is to say that by keeping everyone working for the party (slavery) the idea will live on forever (freedom).

I think the enlightened reader might have a problem with how this concept is play out. We can all agree that the human body has a limited lifespan. We also can agree that ideas and concepts can be useful way beyond our lifespan. I am proclaiming to have the same beliefs as people over 2000 years ago with names Peter, Paul, Luke, Matthew and John.

Where we balk is the value of those beliefs. First of all, mine are personal not enforced on an entire civilization. But, second what if I am wrong? What would it hurt to try and live a better life, be better to fellow humans and strive for a cleaner existence? What am I really missing, the opportunity to prove survival of the fittest?

So while I 100% agree with Orwell’s portrayal of the concepts, I am not solidly in the camp that this is just a foreboding tale of the future, more to come on this as I wrap of the book.

End Your Programming Routine: What I got out of this chapter is more supporting information for my conclusion (so sorry you will have to wait). I think that is going to be exiting to come all the way back around to the beginning and look at where I am at now versus where I was when I started. I think that it is going to reveal a lot about me and how I think and I hope that I can do this series justice. I guess that we will see.