SkyDaemon

A fellow dropzone.com member (and friend of mine) committed suicide on Feb 10th. The concept of suicide and the surrounding circumstances are discussed in this thread http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=1480255;search_string=josh%20whipple;guest=12900301#1480255 Peace be with you. -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

That's funny :-) I wrote something similar. Mine is in shell since I'm less into OOP, C is my friend. ;-) C Code C Code Run Run Code Run Please? Although since my tastes run a different direction it's gay themed. You can read it at:http://earth.e-raist.com/~raistlin/wryting/bash.html find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

That's right! Narcimund's guy is an awesome looking, hardcore computer nerd! Oh yeah, and BASE jumper! Tim: Thanks :-) Krisanne: I know where you live! (well... I could find out.) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Leroy is military, and he's messing with you. If you read the forums you'll see a lot of his posts. -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Like I said... your completely anonymous profile isn't the right way to earn credibility in this particular online community. Bear in mind, this is a group that's seen the wisdom of people asking the same question you did. People who ask the question you did are (sometimes) the same kind of people who have never made a skydive, receive an answer to what kind of BASE rig is a good one, purchase a BASE rig off ebay, and go out and almost kill themselves jumping a 110ft bridge (which was about a mile from a 350ft one, with a real landing area.). -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

You and many other people have asked that exact question. Please search the forums. You'll be surprised at how many people have asked (and received answers) to the questions that are in the mind of a newbie BASE jumper. The forums here (and at blinc) serve as excellent resources for you to tap and do your own research. At the top of this forum there is a link that reads "My First BASE Rig". I'll give you a quick guess as to what's it about. Here's the link http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/safety/detail_page.cgi?ID=65. If you search the forums for "first base rig" you'll get 531 results. If you want to know about First Jump Courses (FJCs), local jumpers, mentors, tailgates, slider up versus slider down (slider off), delays, static line, low freefalls, where to start, etc... (which you'll want to.) You can search the forums. Although your completely anonymous profile will likely evoke skepticism from many jumpers. Good luck. -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

This is a special "Thank you" going out to a -very- cool jump pilot who was extremely cooperative this past weekend. He truly went beyond the call of duty and let me do something I found extemely entertaining and fun. Our little dropzone runs cessnas and there's only so many ways one can exit a cessna182 (bail out the door, step, stand on the wheel, wheel nut, crotch of the strut and the body of the plane...) but it takes a fun, cooperative, and damn good pilot to let you find more creative exits. To all those pilots who give us a ride up to X thousand feet, my hat is off to you. You're good, unsung heros of the dropzone. Thanks. -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Quick solutions: start->run->notepad.exe OR search files and folders->notepad Long Term Solution: Leave the evil Microsoft empire and it's disgusting interfaces, problems. proprietary licensing schemes, closed source software, and unreliability and.... 1) get a mac 2) learn *nix This message has been brought to you by a computer geek who's been in the industry for too many years, and has heard the exact same problem more times than you can imagine... ;-) Good luck :-) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Yuri, I had Lasik in the summer of 2000 and it was a genuis move for me. I love it. I wish you the best with yours. :-) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

English, Spanish, Greek, Russian ;-) Spanish is fine Koine Greek could use some work, but I can read/write it just fine Russian... well my Russian improves significantly after a few drinks ;-) Iiro and I shared a *cough* bottle of vodka after we packed a few BASE rigs, and without ever consciously agreeing to do so, our conversation slipped into Russian. It was fun :-) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Damn! You have my complete and unhindered admiration. That is an amazing accomplishment. Are you going to specialize? -=raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Skydiving: Spectre 170 (use it for CRW) BASE: Fox 285 Vtec, Valved, Multi (silver and pink) Fox 285 Vtec, Multi (purple and pink) Mojo 280 unvented, (lots of history) (black and blue) Raven IV unvented, (flat flying!) (white, red, blue) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Esperanto! Learn to speak it like a native! Actually if you're looking to study a language that has some similarities to English, Spanish, French, German, Italian aren't bad places to start. I think a lot of your decision is going to be based on what languages you want to learn and what they have in common, and finding which one will be easiest to learn first. It's very easy to become discouraged when learning a new language. Using tapes/audio to learn new languages isn't a bad way to do it, however much of learning a new language is pure repitition and memorization of vocabulary. I first learned Spanish, then Greek, then Russian and by the time I was learning Russian the structure of language and how to learn a new language was quite easy. Spanish, French, Italian, German and other european languages have the advantages of using the roman alphabet (or at least most of it). Getting into Russian, most asian languages, (save some such as Malay), Middle eastern languages, or languages of indigenous cultures is that the alphabet is different, as is much of the structure. If you learn something such as Greek or Latin as your first 'foriegn' language, they'll be useful and relatively easy as much of the vocabulary in English is based on latin and greek roots, so many of the words will be quite obvious. It's not a bad introduction to the concepts of gender, case, and singular versus plural conjugation and declinations. Best of luck! find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Time to take advantage of some of the other options I listed... during your next visit to the Rose City. You are always have a place in Portland :-) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

It's hard to be Krisanne.... Stay in touch. -=Raistlin P.S. Did you boss ask you to "cutaway" from work? P.P.S Remember to finish your flare ;-) find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

I have a message for you. find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

"I was going to hit that cliff with my hands on toggles or my hands on risers. I went for toggles." --Slim in a conversation with Raistlin in Portland during his visit in 2003. -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

That's a cool picture! :-) I'm a FreeBSD (as if that wasn't obvious) System Administrator and E-commerce programmer for an e-commerce company. I keep the data center running, and keep the flagship product running. We've developed some pretty cool architecture for how we run things, and I'm really into it (I should be since I designed and developed a lot of it ;-) I spend most of my free time (well, the time I have) working on the house and it's projects, BASE jumping, and throw in an occasional skydive for good measure. Heheh, getting hackers from all walks of life together is definitely the start of a junkyard wars team... there's an example of hackers with a multitude of skills. ;-) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

You and me both man... manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Zen, Nope, can't say I've been to your labs... is that an invitation? :-) I haven't seen you since TF almost two years ago. (Wait... we may have crossed paths in Moab) How've you been? Engineering mentality is a great thing, when you understand it. I think the rest of the world views it... with little patience. ;-) -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Thanks :-) I've always had an innate curiosity to understand things at a conceptual as well as practical level, and I've enjoyed the hacker mentality for a long time. I'll tell my lover that I 'overclocked' the water heater, or 'upgraded' the hot tub (it can take 500 gallons of water from 60degrees to 90 in two hours!) or 'tweaked' the car engine ;-) Understanding the concept of systems and the relationship between multiple moving parts and the functions they perform allows the hacker to make modifications. Now bear in mind these are the kind of people who have a lot of 'projects'... sometimes sprawled out on the dining room table... and in the middle of the project sometimes the buttons don't quite work like one would expect, and sometimes small explosions are considered a 'success'. Phrases such as "YES! It doesn't work in a completely different way!" are exclaimations of excitement. "Well that didn't work", is an optimistic view of a 'setback' which is synonmous with "back to the drawing board". But it's a great way to live... well it is for me find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

I thought I'd shed a little light on what this is, why it's kind of funny, and where it came from... Back in the day, I got 1337h4x0r.com, as a test domain for hosting experiments, DNS tests, etc. Although I've had more people ask for forwarding addresses/aliases there than you'd ever imagine. The entire concept of "1337 speak" came from foiling old filters on usenet. The word "hacker" would trigger a filter on the system, while h4kk3r would slip through. It's still a trick used by spammers who put spaces and other characters into spam to confound spam filters. It's a relatively easy but effective trick as writing regexs (regular expression (pattern matching)) to catch them can be quite difficult. The 0wned, ownz, vocabularly mostly came out of dorky little teenager who defined their ego and themselves by their ability to break other people's systems. (before they grew up and matured... of course. manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

I joined the gallon club donating AB+ before they wouldn't take my blood anymore. Apparently having sex with a member of the same sex since 1979 is enough for the Red Cross to refuse the blood they were happy (and quite grateful) to take before. It's kind of sad considering only 3.2% of people are AB+ and there are very few donors out there... -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

Happy Birthday Spence! -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;

habeneros are truly evil... They can cause major blisters in 'sensitive areas'. A friend of mine was using them in one of his dinners, got the oils on his hands, went to urinate, unzipped, held himself, and ended up in the emergency room with blisters. He thought he got some awful STD... -=Raistlin find / -name jumpers -print; cat jumpers $USER > manifest; cd /dev/airplane; more altitude; make jump; cd /pub; more beer;