Blink and you might miss it

I recently finished readying Reilly's Luck by Louis L'Amour. I've read a fair number of L'Amours and even wrote book tests to test reading comprehension for a couple dozen of them when I was a junior high student. That includes two of his three "larger" novels: The Walking Drum and Last of the Breed. I went looking for The Haunted Mesa this last weekend but was unable to find it. So, I added a trio of his standard paperbacks to my book pile as a bit of a palate cleanser from all of the epic and high fantasy I've been doing lately. True to style, the book featured valiant heroes, evil villains and a couple of gun battles. It got me thinking about the often pictured "fast draw" and the way that L'Amour portrayed it.

There are plenty of L'Amour's books in audio formats and I've listened to my fair share of them. The last one, however, had an interview with him that was rather enlightening as far as the his understanding of gun-battles. He mentioned a showdown within his life time (I wish I could remember the details) where a marshal entered an establishment to apprehend a suspect and the man "went for his fun." In the end both men were dead having short each other multiple times and covering a distance of  ten to twenty feet each. Even though they were being hit by bullets their adrenaline kept them moving and shooting. Many of L'Amour's books feature both people in a gunfight being hit with the winner of the fight the one who survives. The single shot duel to the death is unrealistic and, according to a number of sources, a creation of Hollywood. L'Amour's account also demonstrates what author and gun expert Larry Corriea says about handguns in his blog post on home defense. Handguns "poke holes in people." compared to long guns, pistols are not very effective at killing people. There are very few places you should shoot somebody with a pistol that will kill them quickly.

Competitive fast draw competitions (that is the non-lethal kind) have been going on since the 1950s with different clubs favoring speed or accuracy. The standard methods of testing and timing fast draw is either to use blanks and pop balloons or use wax bullets and a metal target. Different clubs have different rules, but from what I can see the Cowboy Fast Draw Association appears to be one of the largest. They use wax bullets and ask their competitors to dress in period clothing - which I think is appropriate as they focus on period firearms. While the "Wild, Wild West" is a creation of fiction, it's still an era with a look and a feel. The start position is with the hand on the gun, which to me only makes sense as if you know you're going to be in a fight you are going to be holding your gun. They use single action revolvers so the hammer has to be pulled back first before the trigger can be pulled. A double action pulls the hammer back on the first trigger pull and then drops it on the second. Interesting note, the Sig Sauer line of pistols often do  not have a safety but a level that engages a double action trigger. This is why the line, "No safety on the Sig" shows up in the movie Red 2.

The way people draw looks rather odd. Many will crouch down, bending their holster leg quite a bit. This is so when they draw, they can straighten their leg which pulls the holster down limiting how far they have to lift the gun. The real fast shooters also fire from the hip which I imagine takes some practice in order to hit the target. This works well for single shots, but I would hate to have to fire a second from that position. The real impressive things is how fast these folks can react, draw, and fire. This video shows shooters with their times displayed.

Bear in mind that most people blink between .1 and .4 seconds which means that with most of these folks, you might literally miss their draw if you blink. That's kind of intimidating.

Granted, This guy didn't see Trinity coming when he got into this fight. But then unless you've seen They Call me Trinity, you'll never see him coming.

Social Media - an unstoppable force

I was never the biggest Facebook user. Particularly after I found Twitter. Both of those waned when I became an active viewer on YouTube. And then I started a blog - and then I started another. I am no expert when it comes to social media and I am not sure it possible to be. Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book The Black Swan discussed how anything that is socially oriented is subject to low probability, high impact events. I think that few could have even comprehended the impact of social media on our world, or the ebbs and flows of the different platforms. In short, social media has Veni, Vidi, Vici-ed itself into our world.

This Doonesbury comic is on of my favorites. I cut it out of the newspaper and put it on the door to my office. This was before I had a Twitter account (and might have even been before my Facebook page) so I could laugh at it without feeling like it related too much. In some ways, I feel that my life may reflect the character above - I try to keep to the deadlines that I've set for my blogs (Thursdays and Mondays) and get a little apprehensive when those deadlines start to approach and I don't have something ready for them. I've also learned that if I don't check Facebook I miss activities or events that are planned and discussed there. I'm got very mixed feelings about that.

First, I think it's interesting what social media has done for professional interactions and marketing. This is technically two things, so I'll muse on the interactions first in this paragraph. Just today, I listened to a podcast of Writing Excuses which talked about how to recover from professional mistakes, whether your own for someone else's. Howard Taylor mentioned the "eternal" nature of the internet. If you post something on the internet once there is no way to completely remove it. Like the proverbial stone after it's thrown, what you put online is out there and it will connect with something, sometime, and there is little you can do about it. I had an instance during college when someone posted something about me online. I was not a member of the social media community where this was posted and so didn't know anything about it until my roommate started asking me questions. When I asked why he explained about this post he read that sounded like me. He read me the post and sure enough, it was about me. After I got over my initial annoyance and anger (although my friend was more angry then me) I confronted the individual to simply say that he got his facts wrong. I almost burst out laughing when I called his attention to the post and he replied, "You read that? You weren't supposed to read that." I thought, "You put it on a public website with enough information that my roommate could identify all of the parties involved. Why would you think I wouldn't or couldn't read it." Social media hasn't changed. It is amazing what people can learn about you if you're not careful. There are plenty of things that will try to help you avoid social media faux pas so I won't dwell on it.

Social media marketing is the reason I got a twitter account. Robson Wells, author of Variant, Feedback, and the upcoming Blackout was offering a twitter exclusive. He was offering an advanced reader copy of his book as the prize in a drawing. You entered the drawing by tweeting about the book release. I didn't win, but he launched a second twitter drawing very shortly after. Every month until the release of his book Variant he would be conducting a drawing for a $25 gift card to Amazon. The eve of the release he would do a drawing for a new Kindle with five of his favorite young adult books already on it. You entered the drawing by pre-ordering a copy of the book. I decided that for $12 plus shipping and handling it was worth it. It turned out that I won the first drawing for the gift card so I came out about $10 ahead. Robson Wells is not the only one that has used social media to his advantage. I wouldn't have had a twitter account in time to find about about the contest - which required me to buy his book - if he hadn't given me incentive. Mix that with the ability for social media to "spread the word" about new (or established) business and you can effectively bypass all of the major gateways that have been previously the only entrances into successful enterprise. I mentioned the power of YouTube and new musicians in my last post on music.

Social Media is breaking down old walls, but it's also putting up new ones. In many ways it's dividing those that use it from those that don't. I mentioned how I have to check Facebook occasionally or I miss out on some of what's going on, even in my family. Also, things that happen online are not limited to just online. Just Google "What happens on Facebook stays on Facebook." You notice that it's only used to discuss the problems with social media. Not as a cliche or joke, but in all seriousness because there is no possible way for something to "stay on Facebook." There is no stopping it. So, check your privacy settings, guard your information, refer to your family sparingly and don't post while intoxicated and you might, just might avoid having your social media usage leap too far off the screen. As one warning voice mentioned, "If you're not paying for it you're not the customer. You're the product."

I see the light!

Light is pretty cool. That is it is interesting and fascinating, not that it's temperature is particularly chilly. In fact, Archimedes was said to have made a weapon by concentrating light using mirrors. I've found references to others that have tried to recreate this trick including, the Mythbusters (twice) with mixed results. It has been demonstrated that it can be done, but if it was done is a question for history, not science. There have actually been two modern day occurrences that demonstrate the damage the sun can do when people aren't trying to deflagrate ancient warships. The first was in Las Vegas three years ago when a sunbather got more than he was looking for. The second was just last week when a man's car was parked in just the wrong spot and was exposed to 10 to 20 times the normal sunlight. Sixty Symbols on YouTube explains how it happens, as well as how a particular urban myth about Barbecuing pigeons got started.

Light also has the ability to travel really far distances. Even a small mirror can produce a flash that is visible for miles. My siblings and I all owned signal mirrors as kids capable of long range flashes and we took particular delight in finding new ways to direct the flashes. Light always reflects at the angle of impact (like the video explains), so the trick is just knowing how the light bounces. Interestingly enough, Derek, from Veritasium, explains how light is quantized. That is, it arrives in packets. As you back away from a light source the light appears to get dimmer and dimmer until your eyes can't pick it up anymore. But with sesitive enough eyes the sun would not truly go out, but would flicker. That's because the packets are having to cover a larger and larger area as they get further and further away form the source. Derek describes it much better - check out his video.

Now that I've looked at light, perhaps I should look at darkness. Does anybody know the speak of dark?

Building a network

I was in a conference once and the presenter asked, "What do you think of when you hear the word 'Network'?" I spoke up and said, "LAN party." I got a few laughs and the presenter moved the discussion to what is often referred to social or business networking. I've heard people respond to the term networking with fear, trepidation, and even a little hostility. I can understand this mindset and at the same time I struggle with it. My wife would say it's because I'm more of a people person, and I don't think I can disagree.

My first experience with the term "networking" was at a two day training meeting with a company I didn't really like. In the end I was only with them a whopping three months. We finished at 11 am the second day, but they said they were going to have a "networking session" and that we should stick around for it. I skipped out and went to lunch with my father. It took me a while to realize that what they met by networking was to walk around and talk to people. To me that isn't effective networking, that's a room full of awkward conversation where everybody is thinking, "This person is meeting me to further their career." If I ever wanted people to network I wouldn't do it by saying, "We're going to network now! GO!" It kind of kills it.

My second experience with networking was doing an employment workshop with LDS employment services. Quick plug - The two day workshop I attended is one of the most useful things I ever did when it comes to finding new jobs and being competitive for them. If you need help - check out your local center. Anyway, they talked about identifying your network to help find potential employment. I liked looking at that a lot more than "building" my network. This use of networking is a common practice and is arguably one of the most effective ways to find jobs. I feel that if done well, this kind of use is a great way to use your network while not abusing the people that make it up.

To me networking is simply making new friends. I don't call it networking and don't like to think that I'm building a network. I prefer to meet knew people, trade ideas, learn new things, and help others when I can. I've worked in a variety of offices now and feel that those previous colleagues are now part of my professional network, but really they're just good friends who I know from work. Some of those have also become friends that I see outside of work. Some are only colleagues. I once interviewed for a job and even though I didn't get it, I came away from it with a good relationship with someone. Yes, I am glad to have someone who I can consider a friend in an office I would like to work in, but I didn't make the friendship with that intent in mind. I've used other opportunities to meet people and make friends at conferences and training meetings that I know could help me if I was looking to move in their direction, but the way to successfully "network" is identify it when you need it, not seek to build it as you meet people.

The Arbinger Institute wrote two books that discuss why "building" a network doesn't really work. While network is not the actual topic of the books, they discuss how it is possible to treat someone as something other than a person. Prior to reading the books (Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace) I didn't think that I treated people as objects. I didn't put papers on their head or walk into them. But then I had a student come into my office at five minutes to quitting time with a complicated problem that only I could fix and needed to fix as soon possible. The student was no longer a person - they were a nuisance, an obstacle to by long weekend, someTHING between me and getting out of the office. Luckly, I was able to notice this and pulled my feelings in and was able to help them in the best possible way for them. The reason I bring this up? People can tell when you see them as a person and when you see them as something else. So if you're talking to people just to "build your network" you might not have much success. People will know that you're just talking to them to get something from them and it will hamper your communication and their willingness to help you.

So, my advice when it comes to networking? Build yourself a Local Area Network (LAN) and make some friends playing games.