This one isn't anything special, musically. However, it's one of my favorite tunes to play with Lizard and Lissa and Furby when we're playing drunken Rock Band, and I can play it on a real four-string too, so why not?



Lokidude

Mindset of pulling the trigger.

JayG talks about the mindset required to kill, even in self defense. He's been reading a book called "On Killing," apparently a very in-depth and analytical study of the psychological fallout of causing the death of another person. Jay makes some very good points, amongst them being that shooting at a live target is different than punching paper or ringing steel.

I felt that my comment there deserved its own blogpost, so here it is.

I hunt. I take that killing very seriously. But other than practicing trigger pull, it has virtually nothing to do with being able to shoot in self defense. However, it was impressed upon me, at about the time I got my first CCW permit, that if I was going to carry a gun, I needed to make "the choice." I made that choice years ago. I choose me and mine. My wife and I have had that conversation, and she understands. She is coming to the point where she's ready to make "the choice" for herself.

And yes, I pray to God every day that I never have to find out for certain if I really could pull the trigger. I also pray that if God can't grant me that peace, that he can grant me the strength to defend myself and my loved ones, and to deal with the aftermath.

 If you choose to carry a gun, you must make the choice that, if push comes to shove, you can and will take a life to defend your own or that of another.  That doesn't mean that I walk around every day looking for blood.  Quite the opposite, as I said at Jay's, I pray to God every day that I never have to use my gun.  As one dealer I bought a gun from said, after we'd sealed the deal: "Thanks for your business.  I hope you never have to use that."  He was right.  Plan A is to grow old, raise children, love my wife, and spend all my days as a peaceable man.  But I've also chosen a Plan B, as everyone who carries a gun should.

My choice is, at the end of the day, me and mine will go home safely, and I choose to do whatever is necessary to make that happen.

Lokidude

First Impressions on the Droid

Picked up a Droid yesterday. The Blackberry was starting to fail spectacularly, so I needed something new, and I do so much work from my phone that I need a smartphone. And Android OS is the only way to go for smartphones.

I'm actually posting this from the Droid. Battery life doesn't suck. The browser is incredible, and infinitely faster that anything Research In Motion has ever done. The keyboard is decent, but the onscreen kb is too small to be effectively useful. It can run multiple browser windows, which is something I missed on the Curve. And it can multitask, which is something none of the fanbois can do on their precious iPhones. The Google Market is stocked with nifty apps, and is relatively intuitive to search. Navigation and Maps are slick and easy to run.

Dialing will take a bit of getting used to. Unlocking the screen is the same motion as answering the phone, and all of that will take some getting used to, as well.

Unfortunately, Verizon blocks IRC, so I have to use wifi (yeah, Droid has that, too) to use the very nice AndChat IRC app, but Mibbit works on the browser, so I can get around their little restriction.

More to come as I get more time on the phone.

Lokidude

Why I Love My Birthday

I've always loved my birthday. Not usually for the getting older, and not for the presents, not for years. No, no. My birthday is always the first week of April, so it means that every year, baseball's starting up again. I still love a good baseball game, have since I was a kid. And what other song could I possibly play to welcome back the boys of summer?



Lokidude

Larry Correia has a huge...

Announcement!

Go.  Read.

Lokidude