The Screaming Viking

I’ve made it pretty well known via this forum and others to people that know me that I am a proponent of the 2nd.  I think everyone should be able to own a gun and I think you should be able to carry one anywhere.  I think the only real restrictions on firearms should be parallel to getting a license to drive.  Pass a safety test, don’t do it intoxicated…etc.  I have a CWP, and in ND that gives me the right to open carry as well as concealed carry but I very seldom do.  I have carried twice, both times I was picking up the wife at bar close.  I was stone close sober, I haven’t had a drink since the end of October.  I carried to see how it would work logistically.  A loaded pistol is pretty heavy and I just stuck it in the inside pocket of my coat.  I was pretty weighted down and it was pretty obvious that if I decide to do this more I would need to get myself some sort of shoulder holster or concealed belt holster.  I do have a hip holster for my colt .45, but I didn’t want to start a public panic.

This past deer season was the only time I carried openly all the time.  I was back home (small rural town if you haven’t been paying attention) and given the time of year I expect that no one really even noticed.  I did it for a couple of reasons, I carry the side arm when I’m out hunting.  It’s nice to have a pistol to plink around with occasionally.  I also use it to “finish” an animal with a quick shot to the head, I never have liked slitting anythings throat or breaking it’s neck.  When I’m carrying it’s a real pain to take it off and put it back on so I just leave it on all the time.  I could take the pistol out of the holster and walk around with an empty holster…but what would I do with the gun?  It’s stored safely and where I can make sure it’s not touched by someone that shouldn’t if it’s on my hip. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m on a down swing in my workout routine.  I’m not seeing big results on the scale and things are getting to be monotonous.  I realized the other day that I was using the balance scale incorrectly…once I started using things correctly it added 12 pounds to my overall weight.  I still lost 2lbs last week…but seeing the number go up instead of down was just a killer.  I had passed what I considered quite a milestone, only to see it “taken away”.

The weekend was rough, in 4 days I got 2 workouts in for 40min each…I just had no motivation.  I think a lot of it comes from not seeing the drastic results now like I was before.  My clothes have fit pretty much the same for quite a while now, the scale went up (actually went down…but the psychological effect was “up”), and I’m getting irritated about not being able to eat whatever I want.  My knee is also turning into a larger problem.  It pops and snaps now anytime I straighten it out.  I wouldn’t call it painful yet, but there is a sensation from the pop.  It’s very similar to when you pop your knuckles, only it happens all the time.  It is a bit concerning.  I am holding out hope that I can drop weight and rehab it a bit, but more and more that seems like it’s only delaying the inevitable.  Surgery is seeming more and more like a foregone conclusion.  I think there’s been too much weight on it for too long.  Hopefully I can drop weight and build strength back in the knee quickly enough that it doesn’t impact the other one.  I’m hoping to have a doc look at it the beginning of next year and if something needs to be done to it have it worked on in the spring.  I don’t want to struggle with crutches on the ice, and I want to make sure I have a solid healthy foundation to try and work through the down time. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s my opinion that there isn’t a better sport to watch live than hockey.  The action is pretty fast, the stoppages in play are pretty quick…there aren’t a ton of time outs.  The action seems to flow a lot quicker and it just seems to draw me in a bit more.  On the flip side, I think it’s one of the worse sports to watch on T.V.  I don’t have high def, so maybe that would make a bit of a difference…but I can’t keep track of the damn puck.  It’s fairly easy to figure out where it’s at because of how the players react, but to watch it fly around…see it go in the net…until they run a replay I’ve got no idea they score or what happens.  Conversely, I think basketball and football are better watched on T.V.  Outside of the ‘mob mentality’ you get from being part of the crowd the view is much better from my couch.  The replays are better, the camera gets everything and I can back things up on the TiVo and watch it as many times as I want.

I’ve never been to a professional sporting event (that I can think of right now) but it’s been my observation from the T.V. that the crowds for college games seem more fun.  Being part of the college crowd for a couple hockey games and a basketball game over the weekend was worth the price of admission.  There was an energy there that sucked you into the game more than you would have just watching on T.V. at home.  To some degree, I’ve experienced this at a bar but it’s quite a bit different seeing things in person. Read the rest of this entry »

Man, this thing has been the bane of my existence lately.  I’m not going to go into too much detail as to exactly how we use it at the office, but I’ve been working on some scripting that will shutdown servicemix cleanly and then shutdown jboss.  Preferable jboss is shutdown cleanly, but if not I just kill it.  Jboss is a middleware application server and servicemix is an enterprise service bus.  If you want more detail than that about them, read up on the links for each.

This would seem relatively simple, but looking at each there is a little more that goes in to it than just telling them to shutdown.  I issue the command to servicemix to shutdown at which point it stops taking incoming messages, but it needs to finish processing the messages in it’s que.  How long does that take?  It should only take a matter of seconds (or less) but what if it takes longer?  What if the message gets hung up and doesn’t get processed?  How do you check this out?  What I decided to do was issue the stop command via an init script, then use a perl script to monitor the log watching for the shutdown line.  It watches it for 15min, if it sees it..great things move on.  If it doesn’t see the line, the perl script throws an error and the process stops.  It’s important to the business unit that the message in the application isn’t lost. Read the rest of this entry »