Warning: this is a long entry.

One of the first things I noted about the shotgun course was that it stopped raining as soon as I parked my car. I had read conflicting reports of either 10% chance of rain, or 80% chance of rain throughout the day. The sky appeared to be breaking up. At least I didn’t have to put on my rain gear, I would have been extremely hot even under the GoreTex. Like I said in my part one post, my spirits started to lift.

One of the second things I noted was that there was a pigeon flapping around the setup area. One of the guys joked if it was the land owner’s pet pigeon, and Frank replied that it was. He then proceeded to stick his hand out so that the pigeon could nuzzle him. Apparently Frank adopted the pigeon as a young bird and had semi-domesticated it. I expected the pigeon to fly right in front of the firing line and get atomized, but amazingly it stuck around both days. It was gracious enough to hop around to different cars and shit on all of them.

Five students with over a thousand rounds of ammunition between them, zombie headshots, and a domesticated pigeon: we were ready to start blasting stuff.
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Yay! It’s my favorite holiday of the year! I did a pirate ship jack o’ lantern this year. The flicker of the tea light inside makes the edges a little rough in the photo. I used a pumpkin carving kit and a stencil, it was a total hoot. I’m really glad I did this, I just hope my prior life as a pumpkin basher doesn’t come back to haunt me!

I am taking this to Starbucks tonight with a glow-stick, hopefully it will illuminate well.

Today was supposed to be the part two post of my shotgunning course, but something else came up. After four years of ups and downs, my employer axed me and about half of the group I worked in on Monday. My boss and his right hand man were among the casualties. I can’t say I was surprised at anything other than the timing. I’ve been under-allocated and underfunded for the last two and a half years. I worked on quite a few projects across different parts of the company in that time, but my primary role has been guarding my red Swingline stapler, hoping no one found me in the basement.

It turns out that someone finally paid attention and zapped me. I had a great setup: working from home with sporadic trips to Maryland and San Francisco, California; I was able to work mostly flexible hours and could do anything at home as long as I was within earshot of the office phone or the Lotus Notes incoming mail sound. I was fortunate to work under the Captain, a very wily and supportive manager for three out of those four years, and met a lot of great people.

I had hoped to retire by forty, and that might still be in the cards. It will be more difficult without the annual bonuses and salary. I certainly won’t be able to replace the relaxed working environment of the home office.

My employer let me off easy with a very generous severance package, so finances are not going to be an immediate concern. I have also been working for Starbucks since May of 2007 as a barista, mostly to get out of the isolated environment of the home office and meet other human beings. Porter, Rosie and Pearl are awesome, but they have pretty limited vocabularies. One of the nice things about working for Starbucks is that they offer really fantastic health insurance for anyone who works over twenty hours a week. If I don’t find a suitable position by February, at least I’ll have health insurance.

I am looking for senior manager-level front-end Web development and design leadership or senior manager-level user experience and usability leadership positions. I am willing to relocate to northern Virginia, Southern Oregon (to serve the SF Bay area), or Austin, Texas. I would also stay in Richmond, but I am very afraid the salaries are not up to my requirements. But you never know, so if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone, I would be much obliged for your assistance.

Warning: this is a long entry.

Two weeks ago my friend Markie sent me an email entitled, “can you get the weekend off ….” In the email was a link to a Suarez International shotgun gunfighting class held in nearby Culpeper, Virginia. SI teaches classes all over the world. The class material requirements sounded ominous: 150 rounds of birdshot, fifty rounds of buckshot, fifteen slugs, and at least fifty rounds of pistol ammunition. The course notes recommended a flashlight, elbow pads, a shotgun sling, ammunition pouch/sidesaddle/etc, and the obvious eye and ear protection. The course was $265.00 and did not include the cost of ammunition or gear.

I’ve been shooting for the majority of my life, but it wasn’t anything like the type of shooting I expected to do at the Suarez course. Moving and shooting, high round count (for me), etc. Normally my shooting is done at an indoor “bowling alley” style range where both the target and shooter are standing still and facing each other. Most notably, I have never received any formal marksmanship training, just formal gun safety training. I wasn’t sure how I felt about being a novice shooter in front of a professional instructor and demonstrating my skills (or lack thereof) in front of total strangers.

However, any knowledge — even if it’s knowing that I suck — is worth having. I didn’t really consider the prospect of attending the course as “fun,” and my excitement level was quite a bit lower than Markie’s. I figured this is something that I should do as a responsible firearm owner. I also felt that I needed to carry forward a maxim I read many years ago: Teach the Teacher.

I enjoy introducing new shooters into the world of firearms and marksmanship. In order to more effectively help novice shooters understand and enjoy firearms, I felt that I needed to raise my own knowledge of shooting. The better trained and equipped I am, the more fun my friends and family will have when they go with me. Plus, it would never hurt to have a cadre of experienced shooters around me in case the dead rise. ;)

I typed in my credit card information and registered for the course. The next thing to do was go shopping.
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A belated happy birthday to my friend Cuddle, whose birthday was last Saturday. I have a good explanation for why I didn’t post on that day, but it’ll have to wait for later. :)

Happy birthday to my freshman year in college floormate. Can’t believe we made it out of there alive. ;)

It’s been awhile since we’ve had one of these: a Just Say Hi’s zombie survival quiz. The quiz has a good balance of preparedness, ethics, and combat questions. It reinforces my belief that as Science Fiction is to social issues, zombie fiction is to disaster preparedness — an easily accessible way to talk about surviving a total breakdown in society.

I rated a 70%, and I’m not sure why. I answered “scream and jump” to the scary movie question, and had a few compassionate answers. Like most of these quizzes, I wish that this one explained the author’s weighting behind the choices. I chose to stay away from the police station and hospital, and I wonder if that hurt my percentage. I was surprised at the absence of a farmhouse or similar zombie staple.

70%

How did you do?

Two years ago today, Lady Jaye and I brought home a little potato of a dog (sorry, some of the pictures have been corrupted on imageShack). She may have been the runt of the litter, but Rosie has always been lionhearted. We knew she was ours the second she leaped fearlessly off of a tall garden bed to come play with us. We brought her home two years ago today, and I have never regretted it.
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Sometimes it pays off to be cheap. I’ve written in the past about the danger of high tech, tough-as-nails SNELL-rated helmets before, which is why I gravitate towards the “softer,” Department of Transportation-approved helmets. About a year ago I wrote about the Z1R Strike helmet, a DOT-only helmet that was tested to absorb the most G-forces in a crash out of a pool of contestants evaluated by Motorcyclist Magazine. After twelve months of wearing the Z1R Strike as my main helmet, I had to give up on it.
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I found myself at a Rivercity Rollergirls roller derby bout last night. I attended their inaugural event over ten months ago, and had a great time. For $12 at the door, why not? Nothing rounds out the Day of Rest like ten girls in tight shorts or tiny skirts skating around beating the shit out of each other. “The Nightmare on Hull Street” event pitted the Tiger Beatdowns! against the Flaming Hips in an intramural bout. I was stoked.
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I have all sorts of flash memory cards and drives that I use on a regular basis. I have a compact flash for my Canon Digital Rebel, a SD card for my Minolta Ximage camera, a microSD card for my Samsung u740 mobile phone, a Memory Stick for my PSP, and a thumbdrive running Keepass. I had an internal multi-format card reader in my previous workstation. It didn’t always recognize my cards when I inserted them, and I was too lazy to disassemble the older computer to put the reader into my newer workstation. I started looking for an external reader that I could take with me when I traveled, or migrate easily from machine to machine if need be.

I looked to NewEgg, my favorite e-tailer, for a solution. I decided on the i-rocks IR-8100-BK card reader.
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