DLopez

I ain't skeered o' no steenkin pushups! Actually, we haven't been doing them as much due to all the tournament practice! I was hopin' we'd get back into the hard-core workouts! I feel like I'm getting soft! Dang job... making me go out of town so much lately... forcing me to pig out at fine restaurants on the company expense and then hang out later on at the bars with our customers... it's killing my workouts!

Bruce Lee is dead. I don't want to be like him! All you young bucks that laugh at older, chubbier men, laugh while you can because as Mick Jagger said so eloquently once... "Time waits for no one, and it won't wait for me" See if you're still laughing when you hit 40!

(sigh) First they want to eliminate dodgeball, and now they're after martial arts? It's a sign of the anti-christ!

Alrighty, I finally got off my derrier and posted some pics in the 'Photo Album' (use the link in the red bar at the top of this page). Got some vid caps of me scoring some points in the gold medal bout in sparring in the 'Action' category. There's also some pics of our tournament team and me with my Bling Bling hanging around my neck! Here's a link to my Yahoo Briefcase folder where I put an mpeg video that I made of the form (Dae Geup Hyung) I won the gold with: Gold Medal Form - Dae Geup Hyung For best viewing, right-click on the filename and choose 'Save Target As...' to download it to your machine. It is ~7 megabytes in size. That's all the pics I could get for now. I will try to edit up my sparring video to trim down the size. If it isn't too big, I'll put that into my Yahoo Briefcase too, and let y'all know in case you want to see it.

Argh!! Sorry, haven't had time! Been helping out at the Dojang... See, in the office space next door to our Dojang, a Chinese food carryout is going in, and the construction people managed to break a water line and flooded into our space. We had to move a bunch of stuff around so we could pull back the carpet, remove the soaked padding, and then use wet vacs to pull as much water out of the carpet as we could... Waiting for the new padding to get put in, then the carpet will need to be steam cleaned. But all I have are some pics of my intructor sparring and doing his Inverted Sword form. I'm hoping someone got a pic or two of me when I was competing. We have a promotions and pot luck party tomorrow night, hopefully someone will have some pictures for copy. If nothing else, I'll have some "team" pictures of all of our competitors adorned with their medals, and some individual poses.

I sparred against a girl in sparring once. That was the last time I'll do it too. She was pretty good, but whenever I caught her with a ridge hand to the side of the head, or kicked to her torso, she'd claim I was hitting too hard. Now, I'd already had three matches against guys and not a single one of them claimed I was hitting too hard, but now all of a sudden I was. Okay, fine, I eased up, but then the ring judges stoppedcalling my punches or kicks as scores. They said they wanted to see me put more into it, make it look like a kick or punch, not just a push or a touch. Now get this, she'd already won her previous three matches by getting her opponents (all females) disqualified for hitting too hard. So in trying not to lose this match on disqualification, I went easy and she edged me by 1 point. Essentially, I was fighting handcuffed and couldn't do what I would do against another guy for fear of losing on a disqualification. Now, I certainly don't mind losing a match against anyone, and she was pretty good, but the fact she would feign injury to win on disqualifications left me with little respect for her. I know it comes off as me being a poor sport, but it was obvious we weren't sparring on even terms. Ya, after that experience, I have to say that guys fighting against girls in the ring is pretty pointless, IMO. I'm sure there are many women that don't play games like that, and would like to go head to head to see how they measure up, but I don't find the idea of being disqualified and gaining a rep for not having control very appealing just to find those kinds of women.

I was hoping someone else would chime in with some other sources of info, but since not, I guess I'll drop a few more names that had a lot to do with the formation of The Consitution. James Madison. Alexander Hamilton. John Jay. Those three had lots to say about not only the separation of powers, but the whole checks and balances idea in The Federalist Papers. Well, okay. They had lots more to say than just that, as they were basically campaigning for the ratification of the new Constitution with those essays. It's overwhelming how much they had to say!

Cool! Hey, we'll get to start calling you "Aefiana Jones"? It's been a while since I took a college course. I miss those days. All the parti... uh, I mean all the studying! I'm trying to get the company I work for to send me to a couple of courses called "Advanced Topics in Power System Protection", and "Wide-Area Measurements for Power Systems: Monitoring, Protection, and Control". Ya, those are the kind of classes I get to look forward to. I really should take a class in "Sensual Massage Techniques" or something!

That's awesome! Congratulations on placing 2nd with your Kata! Don't fret the sparring though... Better to play it safe and be able to compete again than risk an injury that could sideline you for a while. You'll get 'em next time!

Tao, shmao! Here in Texas, we simply call it "Herding cats".

Yes!! There you go Batt! Read Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" papers! You will find lots of ideas of his that went into the Constitution. I thought Thomas Paine's writings were a little easier to read than John Locke's, but Locke is equally opinionated on how a government should be. Maddwraph, you're getting some good stuff for writing an essay now!

I didn't mean it to sound like the Founding Fathers, and the Framers of The Constitutions weren't learned men. They were exceptionally wise, especially considering that, at the time, living in "The Colonies" was viewed as a distinct step down on the social level back in England. What I meant was there was no blueprint for our Government at the time of the Revolution... No working example to copy or emulate. Indeed, the very fact that the first attempt at a Federal Government under The Articles of Confederation failed miserably highlights that what the Founding Fathers thought would work at first, actually didn't despite all their wisdom. But they figured it out, hammered out The Constitution which established the 3 branches of the federal government with it's checks and balances, and we are where we are now thanks to them! But of course, the USA didn't really acheive greatness until they added The Republic of Texas as the 28th state in 1845!!

Here's some starting places: Political Ideas 1. Where did the idea for the three separate branches of the federal government come from? (Executive, Legislative, Judicial) 2. Where did the idea for checks and balances in government come from? 3. What did it take to get all of the states, each with their own governments, to agree to be governed at a higher, federal level? Hint: The first two didn't exist before the Constitution was ratified in 1788. Institutions 1. Since America's type of government was radically new, and even took a couple tries to get a workable Constitution after the Articles of Confederation failed, there was no established pool of academia on this type of government to draw reference from. Who was going to train the minds of it's future leaders? Okay, thought of a second idea. 2. A change of ideas occurred on what the Framers thought was important in running a government, between when the Articles of Confederation was ratified, and the Constitution was ratified. (On the job training? ) What were some of those changes? Hope that gives you some ideas of what to write about.

Well, aefibird? You left us all hanging! How'd you do? We're dying to know! I'm sure you kicked butt and took names later!

Well, it sounds like she feels guilty about wanting out of the relationship because of how wonderful you've been to her, and she doesn't want to hurt you, but she still wants to be free. The point I hope you get out of all this, is don't get angry about this change. Getting angry doesn't help anything, and you might say or do something you will regret later. Life is full of changes, and some will be very disappointing, but you have to face them and turn them into a positive. Like many of the others have said already, get back into some of the things you sacrificed for her, and start looking forward. Who knows, you may find after a while that you don't want her back even if she does want to get back together again, and you might even wonder why you ever felt that way to begin with. You gotta be strong.

I don't believe that is a fair description of TKD. Yes, TKD came into being after WWII, but the techniques employed didn't just appear overnight. Practically all the principles of TKD existed for centuries before they were collected into the MA called TKD. While it's debatable how much of TKD is Japanese and how much is indigenous Korean martial art, any cursory research into TKD will show that the techniques employed are as old as "martial arts". While it is popular to disparage TKD as being "useless in a real fight" (which, IMO, is still an unproven opinion itself), the one thing that cannot be legitimately claimed about TKD is that it is some sort of new MA, invented just over 50 years ago, and that its use has no historical practical base.

Okay, If you don't want to hear some tough news, stop reading right now. I mean it. Seriously, if you just want to hear comforting words, and not an impartial opinion of what's going on, don't read any further. Okay, last chance. You're still reading? Allright then, dude, I'm sorry to be the first one to say this, but from the sound of it, it doesn't sound like things are going to work out like you hope. The "we need our space" line is an old one, and it's often used when the person wanting out of the relationship doesn't know how, or have the nerve, to come right out and say they want out of the relationship. The "we need our space" most often means the person saying it wants to see what dating other people will be like, and whether they find someone else as good as they already have is irrelevant to their thinking. I know you have a lot of emotion invested in this relationship, but, if what you say is accurate, it's pretty evident that she doesn't share that same level of commitment you have. You can wait for her to go off and "experience college", hoping she'll come back to you, but remember one thing: "Out of sight, out of mind." The longer you two are apart, the easier it will be for her to break it off later, by claiming that you two have "changed". There's always the slim chance that she will come back, but I've seen this sort of thing too many times to not recognize what's going on. I just hate to see someone put themself through a lot of pain, hoping and wishing for something so bad. You're going to make it harder than necessary if you hang on and cling to the idea that she'll come running back or that she won't find someone else. If she doesn't realize what she has in you, then it's going to be her loss, and you really deserve someone better than that. I'm sorry if that was too blunt, but I belive it's better to face difficult changes straight up, and not try to convince yourself that change hasn't come in your life. It sounds like this is one of those times.

I don't understand this "second nature" excuse. Hitting full contact by accident is one thing, but nobody has that much lack of control that you would grab their leg and try to twist it while attacking your opponent's face. That isn't a lack of control, that is a lack of respect for your sparring opponent. Sounds more to me like you were just intent on proving how much better your previous training was than TKD, which is total *. The only thing you would have proved is that you have to rely on the sucker punch to be effective. And please don't tell us you didn't know what the rules of sparring were before you started, because I'm not buying that. If you can't control your actions in the sparring arena, do the right thing and inform your sparring partner so they can decide whether they want to chance getting injured from someone that doesn't know how to spar within the rules.

Scott... or Shelly... or scottnshelly, I sense you just need to satisfy a competition bug, and really, there's nothing wrong with that. The best way to see if your skills are up to snuff is in a safe, controlled, environment. Try to hook up with a sparring partner, and see how you do. Set up some strict rules, or have hardly any rules at all if you like. But at least set a rule for no weapons, and don't kill each other. The point is, keep it under control. Have a friend referee even. Don't leave it up to an uncontrolled situation where you might find out the hard way that you're really not faster than a speeding bullet, or as tough as a steel knife. That's my two cents.

It's a normal feeling. I got that feeling when I started working right out of college with a brand spanking new bachelor of science in electical engineering degree. You could say my BSEE degree was my 1st degree black belt in engineering. Once your eyes have "opened" to just how much there is to know about a particular subject, you have a definite feeling of "smallness". I don't know about everyone else, but that just makes me even hungrier to know what I know that I don't know.

I got some photos of several of my classmates competing, but none of me. My son was videoing several of my competitions, but with a friend's camcorder, so I need to arrange to get a copy of the video. I'll see what I can get together and post them on the Photo Album.

Sorry to have it happen against your team, gheinisch. Still, the Braves post-season record far outshines anything the Astros have ever done in their history, which is why this series win was so amazing! You realize that the Astros were 0-fer 43 years in any kind of playoff success, right? It doesn't get much worse than that! Thanks for the well wishes, and we'll see if the Astros can continue this magical year for a little while longer!

I don't believe it!! I can't believe it!! The Houston Astros finally won a post-season series by clobbering the Atlanta Braves 12-3 in game 5 of their division series! Awesome!! Next up, the St. Louis Cardinals. Go 'Stros!! Pluck the redbirds!!

Myth. (But Polly wants a cracker) are you willing to bet your life on that. Absolutely! I have no doubts about my abilities. In fact, when we spar, I don't even get to use the joint lock and throwing/grappling techniques we are learning, and I have full confidence in the ones that I know how to use regardless of not being able to use them in sparring. And I'm pointing out that, for me at least (and I am not anyone special), that notion is a myth. I've asked others in our Dojang about this, and to a person, they all agree that it takes a deliberate, concious effort to hit lightly. It isn't automatic, so I don't see how the conclusion is drawn that somehow in a real fight, I would automatically hit lightly in that situation. It just doesn't follow. Like I said before, the biggest mistake you could make is underestimating someone's capabilities simply because you know they point spar.

Yep! It looked like all of them were there!! Master Son Jin Suh performed his (can't remember what it's called) rapid fire hand strikes form, then later demonstrated how to use those strikes against an attacker. Master Sims performed Baek Pahl Ki Hyung, making it look sooooooo easy. I don't remember all their names, but one of the Masters from Austin did some sword cutting demos, rope restraint techniques, walking cane techniques, and some cool board breaking action! There was also a very entertaining performance of "contemporary" martial arts, where some students and instructors put together some techniques choreographed to music (Chariots of Fire), only the techniques were performed in ultra-slow motion! It was great! It's always impressive to see the forms and techniques, and even the weapons performed by the masters!