YAIIB Syndication Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:00:59 -0400 support@imminst.org (ImmInst Forums) IP.Blog 60 Father
By far the most common activity we did as a family was going camping. We went several times a year when I was growing up. Typical destinations included Yosemite, the Pinnacles, and Arroyo Seco. Camping activities included hikes, fishing, biking, rock climbing, etc. We went at various times of year, allowing us to see the waterfalls of Yosemite in all their phases, from barely a trickly to a torrential downpour.

Later, in my teenage years, my dad got me a telescope, and we'd go up into the hills to try to get away from city lights and see the stars. (On a sidenote, we went up into the hills to see Haley's Comet when I was perhaps eight years old, give or take.) I can remember seeing Venus when it was just a crescent, and it was truly fascinating. So much so that my dad bought a 4.5-inch Newtonian reflector, which we then used to see the stripes of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, and once we even saw the polar ice cap of Mars (when it was at its closest a few years back). I even tracked down Uranus one time, using a planet finding chart to get the approximate location, then looking at all the stars in the vicinity and taking note of all the stars in the field of view. The following two nights, the one "star" that moved was then picked out as Uranus. Aside from being slightly fuzzier than the other stars, there wasn't anything about it to distinguish it as a planet. Alas, I'll need a bigger telescope for that!

Also in my teenage years, as I've previously discussed, my dad took us out shooting. His collection started off with the .22 rifle and the .22 handgun. Then he added the SKS, and finally the 9mm Ruger. According to my mom, in later years he bought her a .357 magnum revolver for personal protection, which she keeps for just that use now. And she also said he bought a .30-06 rifle. I've never seen it, but I'm curious.

Anyway, the last major outdoor activity that my dad added to the family schedule was boating. When I was in college, he bought a small speed/fishing boat of sorts, a little 14-footer that could get up to about 40-45 miles an hour, but which also included an electric trawling motor. My parents bought a house in Stockton, CA, right on a levee, and they went out onto the Sacramento River Delta levee system quite often, sometimes cruising, sometimes speeding around, sometimes fishing.

Of course, occasionally we did a combination of these activities. For example, we spent a week at a campground up by Clearlake, and while there we went boating for a day. Then we spent a day shooting in a valley about 20 miles away, with a large hill as a backdrop and plenty of abandoned garbage to shoot at (an abandoned trailer, a large tractor wheel about 150 yards from the random park bench we used as a bench rest, etc.). Funny story: my dad went shooting with my brother and a friend, and they recorded much of it on the video camera. In the video, there was a scene where someone ate a Snicker's bar and left the wrapper on the park bench. Then we went back a couple months later for another shooting trip, and the Snicker's wrapper was still there!

At the time, I don't think I really appreciated how much quality time we spent together on these outdoor trips. In some ways, thinking back on those times makes me sad, because my father is gone now. But in many ways, those memories make me happy, or at least comforted, because I know that I had those good times. I know I can't bring him back. Whatever I might do to help advance the end of aging, it's too late for my father. So while I don't want to take a deathist's position of accepting death, I don't think that being comforted by the good times is an acceptance of death. It's merely making the best of a really crappy situation. He's gone, but I have good memories I can hold on to, to keep him near me in some way. The more I remember him, the less his death was in vain. I can pass on that love for family to my children, and with any luck on the anti-aging front, they won't have to deal with losing their father.]]> Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:52:54 -0400 Father
At some point during my research of various guns I might consider buying, I remembered my dad's gun collection. At first, I thought about the trips out into the boonies to shoot with the full array of weapons he had. He had two rifles and two handguns. One of the rifles was a .22 of some sort, and the other was a Chinese-made SKS variant. The SKS was "neutered", in the sense that it only fired in semi-automatic mode, though if you got it hot enough, it would "cook off" a few rounds in fully automatic mode. The idea sounds neat at first, but it's actually rather annoying when you're practicing markmanship on a target 150 yards away! However, my dad would do it for fun sometimes, shooting rapidly from the hip so that the gun would heat up. If he was lucky, it would cook off the last 3 or 4 rounds of its 10-round capacity.

To be honest, I actually preferred the .22 rifle. Although there's something inherently "masculine" in shooting a large caliber carbine designed for military use, the bruises I invariably got made it hard to justify shooting more than about 30 rounds in a given day. With the .22 rifle, I could gladly go through a couple hundred rounds in a day.

The handguns were a .22 target pistol (i.e., with a relatively long barrel for a handgun) and a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. I couldn't remember the brand of either.

Anyway, as I was thinking of my dad's 9mm, I remembered the trips we made to the indoor shooting range. I can remember working on my accuracy at ranges of 7 up to about 15 yards. (Random memory: I can remember one trip in particular, where we ran into our barber on the next lane over. He was shooting a revolver with black powder bullets. He let me shoot a round, and it had quite a bit more kick than my dad's gun.) I was having a lot of fun, so my dad bought me a “National Shooting Club” membership, complete with a photo ID card, and he promised he'd bring me back as often as I could afford, i.e., I'd have to buy my own ammo. As we neared the end of the session, during which my accuracy had been pretty decent, I wanted to keep going. Dad resisted, thinking that we’d already shot quite enough for one day. But eventually he relented, and he bought me another box of bullets.

With each reload, my accuracy suffered, however. At 15 yards, my previous 4-5 inch groupings were now covering almost the whole paper target. By the last clip of ammo, I only sent the target out about 7 yards. My dad kept saying I was too tired to shoot straight, but it was just so weird. Up to the moment that the gun fired, I could swear that the gun was aiming at the center of the target, as accurately as I had been earlier in the day. Yet the bullets would miss the center by half a foot or more sometimes. I remember firing one shot and no new hole appeared on the target. I tried to convince myself that the bullet had passed through an existing hole, but my dad kept saying that I missed the target completely. I couldn’t believe it!

Despite the poor ending, it had been a great day at the range. It was the last time I went shooting with my dad, however. I was proud of that NSC card, but I never got to use it again. I was a freshman in college, and soon I was off to CSU, Chico. Tight finances and the distance kept me from the hobby, and over time I lost the urgency to want to go. Then I got married, moved around a lot, and started having a children.

Now, about a dozen years later, I want to get back into the hobby. And remembering my father’s 9mm, I called my mom about a month ago and asked if she still had it. As luck would have it, not only did she still have it, but she was planning to visit us within the next month. So she set about to finding all the parts to the gun (the gun itself, the box it came in, the magazines, a holster, and even some unused ammo). About a week before she came, she told me it was a Ruger. Up to that point, I had no idea what brand it was.

In the meantime, I prepared myself to take possession of my father’s handgun, the one in his collection that I had loved the most. I studied for and received my Handgun Safety Certificate, a state requirement to purchase a handgun, and apparently even to inherit one. I purchased a cable lock, since I was almost certain my dad hadn’t had one. I even researched the form I would need to fill out to register myself with the state, so to speak.

In the weeks I waited, I began to grow anxious. I began thinking about Dad more, thinking about the trips we took, about that day at the range. I found myself more emotional, more prone to crying during chick flicks or whatnot. I can remember sitting at church, and a girl talking about a friend of hers whose father had been killed in a car accident. That had set me off, so bad I had to walk out of the chapel and collect myself.

So Tuesday morning, less than four days ago, my mom showed up to visit and see her grandchildren. She dropped off the gun, but it wasn’t until that night that I finally got the chance to open it up. It was in the original cardboard box the dealer delivered it to my dad in, complete with the model number, serial number, date of purchase, and a few other registration numbers (probably dealer license numbers or whatever). Inside was a red hard plastic Ruger box. Inside that, was the gun itself, along with a lock for the box and the instruction manual. (The red box didn't fit inside the cardboard box when locked, oddly enough, so that's why the lock wasn't on.)

It was quite a moment to see that gun, to hold it, to struggle to operate the slide. A Ruger P89, it has a manual safety that kind of gets in the way of grasping the rear of the slide to pull it back. The instruction manual clearly states never to operate the slide by grasping the front half, even though that seems an easier way to do it. Whether due to lack of lubrication, or perhaps just because of how the gun is built, it’s difficult to get the slide to move at all, yet once it does move, it almost flies back. Releasing the slide slowly is similarly troublesome: it stays, stays, stays, then nearly slams shut. And locking the slide open is even more difficult. The slide stop is placed so far from my thumb that I have to hold the gun at an awkward angle (on its side, over-rotated so that it’s even upside down to an extent) to lock the slide open, unless I cheat and grab the front half of the slide (which is a no-no, remember!).

I read the owner’s manual cover to cover, then field stripped the gun to see what state it was in. As I had feared, it was filthy inside. Grease and metallic powder and large-grain dust everywhere. The barrel was so full of large dust flakes that for a moment I thought the barrel was pocked. Luckily, it was an illusion of shadows cast by the dust in the barrel.

The spring and guide rod were covered with greasy metallic powder, and the trigger assembly looked like it was a component inside an automobile engine, it was so covered with grease and soot and large-grain dust. I don’t know what amount of dust/grease buildup is normal in a gun, but if I had had to guess, I’d have said this gun had never been cleaned since my dad bought it. But I was up to the challenge of cleaning the gun myself, at least what cleaning can be done without further disassembly after field stripping.

To be honest, field stripping it was actually fun. Even cleaning and lubricating it was fun. It was amazing how much difference in appearance there was, before and after. Maybe it’s just the novelty of it, but I’d like to learn to appreciate the maintenance aspect of the gun, the way that car restorers appreciate the maintenance aspect of their vehicles. I intend to take care of this gun. It’s not just some toy that you put ammo in and blast away. It’s a well-crafted machine. It’s one of the few tangible things I have left from my father. It’s my inheritance.]]> Sat, 12 Apr 2008 03:08:35 -0400 Second Amendment Sports
At first, the pain, sorrow, and even anger were present with me on a daily basis. Over the intervening years, however, I’ve largely recovered. In fact, I often go weeks without consciously thinking about him or his absence. To a certain extent, this dulling of the memory causes a bit of shame. But things have changed in the last month or so, initially by means of a video game of all things...

You see, I've been playing Fallout 2 pretty regularly for the last couple months. About a month or so ago, I had gotten bored with the storylines and missions. I began creating new characters, just to try different approaches, different sets of skills, different weapon combos and tactics... In the process, I started to have a renewed interest in firearms.

And why not? Firearms represent the geek’s playground, where you can manipulate basic properties like kinetic energy, momentum, velocity, caliber, bullet length, density, aerodynamic (in-)stability, etc., to accomplish desired results, such as accuracy, range, penetration (measured for armored and unarmored targets), bullet expansion and/or fragmentation, etc.

In Fallout 2, there were various types of ammo, most of which could be used in a variety of "small guns", from handguns to submachine guns to rifles. One of my favorite Fallout 2 "small guns" was the Desert Eagle, though admittedly the gun is not as powerful in the game as it ought to be. Anyway, in the game, it’s chambered in .44 magnum, but I knew that a .50 caliber variant existed, made famous in pop culture by various movies, so I researched it. Turns out that the .50 caliber version isn’t illegal in all 50 states, though it is in my home state of California. I then discovered that the manufacturer had a so-called Baby Desert Eagle, which I then learned was a design based on the CZ75 pistol. So I researched the CZ75, and found that there was a conversion kit to use cheap .22LR ammo. Other gun owners recommended it, having good accuracy for a reasonable price. On top of that, the .22 conversion kit allows you to practice with dirt cheap plinking ammo, but with the same gun grip and trigger pull, so that whatever skill/accuracy you learn with the .22 will be preserved when you switch back to the native caliber.

I also researched the Beretta 92 series. According to the info I could find on the web, the Beretta was more expensive but also more accurate than the CZ75. The CZ75 got higher marks for "tactical" use, like the ability to draw the weapon quickly and engage a "bad guy", without sacrificing safety when holstered. Of course, I don't really see myself owning a gun for "tactical" or "self defense" use, but rather for target practice and local shooting competitions. Anyway, as I thought about the possibility of getting a CZ75 or Beretta, I remembered my father’s gun collection.

In my teen years, my dad took me and my brother on several shooting trips. We’d go way out into the boonies, miles from the nearest building, tens of miles from anything that could be called a town. He had a small but decent collection, with two rifles and two handguns. Those were some great trips, and being outdoors, the rifles were more fun than the pistols, especially at ranges beyond about 50 feet. But my dad also took me on a couple trips to a local indoor shooting range, where we focussed on the handguns. And that's the subject of my next installment...

Anyway, just thinking about those shooting trips brought good memories of my father back into the fore of my mind, and I've been occupied ever since with near-daily thoughts of my father.]]> Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:48:32 -0400 Father
At the time, I was in Atlanta, GA, while my seven-month-pregnant wife and our son were still home in Tulare, CA, over 2,000 miles away. I had been out of work for much of the previous year, so I took the job in Atlanta, knowing that it would be almost two months before we could save up enough to move out there.

In the previous five months, I had become aware of the possibility of ending aging. I had learned about Dr. Aubrey de Grey and his theories, and I was fascinated with the possibilities for society and for my family. My father had some health issues, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and a family history of heart disease. It sounded serious, but his father was still alive and kicking, despite multiple heart-related episodes (including a heart attack 25 years earlier), so I had always just figured that my dad would live to a good old age. With my new knowledge of the direction of regenerative medicine in the next few decades, I now had a hope that he might just make it, that he might have a chance to see the end of aging.

I began donating to the MPrize, what little money I could afford anyway. At first, I had doubts about how quickly the medicine could really be developed. But by that fateful day in October, I had convinced myself that I would almost certainly live to see the end of aging, and it was for my father and mother that I would do what I could to accelerate investment in the relevant biomedical research. I had even tried to broach the subject with him in September, though he was as ingrained as the rest of society with the notion of the fixedness of aging.

Then my mother delivered the news that shattered my otherwise normal life. Words cannot adequately describe how I felt for the next few hours, days, weeks... To be sure, I was in a daze. I can remember walking in that Atlanta suburb, with no destination in mind, talking to my wife on my cell phone. I remember ending up at a wooded park on a hillside, the air full of mosquitoes, my wife doing her best to console me. I remember going into the house that I was staying at in Atlanta, pulling up to the piano, and digging up some sheet music. I found music for the second movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata, an initially somber piece, and I can remember trying to read the music through the blurriness of tears, doing my best to focus on the music and not on the future. The music picks up warmth as it progresses, and this lifted my spirits a little as I struggled with the piece.

It's been nearly three and a half years. Shortly after he passed away, I joined the ranks of the 300 at the MPrize, using his death as the impetus for my joining. In the last month I've found a rebirth of my sense of loss, brought about by a renewed effort to remember him and involve myself in hobbies that we had once enjoyed together. It's a bittersweet set of emotions that reminds me how much I love life. I miss him, but I have not forgotten him.]]> Thu, 10 Apr 2008 03:04:04 -0400
I tried one in the past. Two, actually. Called Longevity First and Jay Fox's CR Blog, they were mediocre at best, save that Longevity First got syndicated by the Methuselah Foundation on the front page of their MPrize.org website. Both sites have been irrevocably lost to \dev\null, because I ran the website that hosted the blogs, and I stopped paying the bill, and I didn't have a backup of the forum database...

Anyway, as I said, Longevity First was syndicated, and I think my CR blog even had inbound links from other CR blogs, so I got decent traffic. However, I didn't post often enough to be worth syndicating, so the Methuselah Foundation and I mutually agreed to give my Longevity First space over to a more timely author.

My CR blog was a failure on two fronts. First, I didn't keep it up very long, and second, I'm back to my old eating habits...

So I'm going to give this another go. This time, however, it'll mostly be a sort of online diary, save it'll be of details I don't mind being semi-public (well, fully public in the day and age of google). As an added benefit, rather than try to run my own website and blog software and database, etc., I'll just use this newfangled invention: The forum-attached blog.

That's probably not the technical term for it. But it's attached to the forum, not just by web links but by the forum database. Sweet, one account, two features: forum and blog! So much easier than the maintenance was on my other blogs!

Anyway, this is just an introductory post, and I have to get to work before my boss gets pissed off. So, for now, so long...
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