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I’ve been a software trainer and technical writer for nearly 18 years. Before that, I was the employee who was eager to learn new techniques and share them with colleagues. My dad was a photography instructor in the Navy. So, perhaps I inherited a teaching gene.

Last Fall, I acted on a long-time inclination and sought out firearms training. I wanted to get a concealed carry permit, and thought I should be well-informed before I took the leap of buying a gun. While I expected to be a bit nervous (and I was), I was also excited to learn something utterly new. Fortunately, I picked a very good instructor, whose manner made me immediately comfortable. Once he walked me through the mechanics of safely handling revolvers and semi-automatic pistols, any nervousness evaporated.

When he took me to the indoor gun range, it was love at first shot. Let me explain: target shooting is not an act of aggression. It’s the satisfaction of achieving precision with a mechanical device. I’ve felt the same way when piloting a race car at speed, back when I was in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America). I’ve experienced the same thrill when I turned the last bolt on an engine, then turned the ignition key to bring it to life. Soon, I was going to the range at least once a week, often more. It’s a fantastic stress reliever!

Teaching Others

When some of my women friends found out I was shooting, they asked if they could tag along. Their well-meaning husbands had bought guns for them to carry, but they’d never shot them. Soon, I fell naturally into instructor mode, showing them what I’d learned, and helping them get comfortable with their guns (and incidentally helping them figure out that their husbands’ choices might not be what they really wanted). I found myself devouring books, magazines, and YouTube videos in a drive to improve my shooting so I could pass on what I was learning.

Learning New Skills

I took (and passed) the GLOCK Certified Armorer’s Course so I could maintain my own pistols. It was gratifying to get my hands dirty taking such a well-conceived mechanical device apart and putting it back together (no parts left over!) It reminded me of the first Volkswagen engine I built: seeing how cleverly parts were designed, and how they all worked together, was very satisfying to the logical, mechanical side of my thinking.

I decided that I should formalize my role as an instructor, so I began pursuing the necessary series of NRA-sanctioned courses. And now, I’m proud to say, I’m officially an NRA Certified Pistol Instructor!

While my main livelihood will no doubt still be software training, I’m soon going to deploy a site under the Target: Libertas banner you see above. The concept is that defending one’s personal liberty is a desirable target, and I want to enable more people to be safe, responsible, sane gun owners, so they will be empowered to protect their own liberty and the safety of their loved ones. I especially want to concentrate on teaching women to safely defend themselves—and maybe discover the joy of shooting, too.

A client sent me an InDesign file, complaining that the placed Illustrator EPS file within would not display at High Quality Display. He assured me that the file was up to date.

My first move, of course, was to resave the Illustrator file as a native AI file. Hmmmm…no luck.

Both the InDesign file and the Illustrator file are large—72 x 48 inches. The Illustrator file is not complex—no effects, no symbols, no patterns. At Fit Page in Window, InDesign is displaying the page at 14% magnification. Even when High Quality Display is invoked, the Illustrator file looks ratty. However, once I zoom in to 50%, all is well.

At first, I thought this was just InDesign thinking, “why bother to render detail when you’re zoomed out so far?” But I made another discovery.

A smaller Illustrator file (smaller in terms of dimensions) displays fine at any magnification. Here’s a comparison:

InDesign rendering of vector art at High Quality: Large-dimension Illustrator files pose a challenge.

The top file is 18 inches wide, 1.2MB, placed at 100% in a 20×20 InDesign file. The bottom file is 2.5 inches wide, 1.1MB, placed at 800%. So it’s not a matter of file size; it’s a matter of dimensions, apparently.

Output is fine—only the display in InDesign is questionable, and only when you’re zoomed out (the particular zoom level varies according to the dimensions of the InDesign file). Zoom in sufficiently, and you’ll see the real story. And if you’re still in doubt, make a PDF. If the PDF looks good, that’s all that counts.

Little on the outside, big on the inside: the Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB (that’s 671,088,640MB) drive is currently on sale for about $110 at Best Buy (regularly priced from $129-$145 at other sources). Available in Ruby Red and Tuxedo Black. Other capacities are also available, from 250GB-1TB. The drives are petite — only 5.125″x3.125″x.4375″.

Seagate FreeAgent Go 640GB USB 2.0 drive

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I wanted to test Snow Leopard on the MacBook Pro I use for public demos and classes, and didn’t want to munge the drive irreversibly. So I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the drive onto the Seagate drive, then ran the Snow Leopard install on the Seagate — it’s a bootable drive. So far, all the necessities (applications, printer drivers, scanner driver) seem to work fine.

Consider this my public confession that I am not a bleeding-edge adopter of a new operating system: I used to be more intrepid, but I didn’t want to take chances with my demo machine. Carbon Copy Cloner is great for this, and it also provides an incremental backup feature. CCC is donation-ware: if you like it, you can donate to the developer. I guarantee that you’ll like it, and I encourage you to generously support Mike Bombich and other developers who contribute so much to the software ecosystem.

Note: while the Seagate drive can be used on Mac or PC, Carbon Copy Cloner is Mac-only.