FlyingRhenquest

Occasionally I'll get a visitor from sea level. I've had a couple of them have difficulty up on the top of trail ridge road at 12100 feet MSL, especially if I take them up on the first couple of days. If I get many more, I might have to install an oxygen system in my car... I was a bit concerned for my sister and niece when they did their tandem here, but they handled their short time at 17 grand just fine. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I don't know if tracking counts as a discipline but I loves me some tracking. BASE is only illegal where it's illegal if you get caught. In these United States of America you can commit a felony and go on to be President, so long as you don't get caught (How many of the previous presidents would have been arrested for felony drug possession if they'd been caught?) Of course BASE you kind of need a ground crew which is no good if you're antisocial. You could fly a wingsuit in a couple hundred jumps if you want to. If you want to jump alone, jump alone. It's usually more fun with friends though. I'm happy enough jumping alone but I'll go with groups of up to 3 other skydivers if some people want to. I never have to do anything in particular though. Some days I'm happy enough just to go out and do a high pull and enjoy the scenery for 15 minutes or so. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've eaten three out of four of these things. I admit I mostly do prawn heads and chicken feet to freak my room mate out. The look on her face was hysterical. Doesn't help that she's got a huge phobia of snakes and the restaurant we were at had a bunch of tanks with eels in them. They weren't pettin' eels, either. They were eatin' eels. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Of course! I floss daily! Mental floss! I've been waiting 20 years to drop that line. *edit* By the way, did anyone else get "The secret to raising a kind daughter" in the related stories on that page? Seems a bit ironic... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I honestly didn't feel THAT afraid on my first jump! Then the AFFI showed me the video a bit later and the deer in the headlights look on my face as I was going to the door told another story! Heh heh heh. I think I didn't notice due to the massive adrenaline rush I was getting at the time. Looking back on it, I'm a little surprised I even got out the door. Then I did it anyway. And again and again at an average of one jump about every 2.6 days since then. For the first 30 jumps or so I talked myself out of going to the DZ on a few nice days. Just didn't want to deal with the stress those days. Right now I'm waiting (very) impatiently for the weather to stop sucking so I can go do a few more jumps. Looks like it's going to be crap for at least another couple of weeks Several times during AFF training, I had several AFFIs tell me that if I could climb out of the door mock-up on the ground, I could do it in the air. It's no different, they said, at 1 foot or 10000 feet. I didn't believe them. About a year later I found myself repeating that very advice to a new AFF student who was practicing on the mock-up. Somewhere along the way I'd realized the truth of the statement. Around the same time I'd had a dream where I had to jump from a platform across a 200 foot drop to some rope rigging on a hot air balloon. I told myself "I'd have no problem doing this at 6 feet and the only difference here is in my mind," and made the jump. Now in theory I should be OK, then, climbing out the door of one of the planes in the air without a parachute on and then climbing back in. I'm not in a huge hurry to test this (I doubt the DZ would even let me on the plane without a parachute) but I think if my life depended on it I probably could. I can say for sure that this would not have been true prior to me starting skydiving. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I'd rather approach it not from a standpoint of dwelling on the tragedy but rather reflecting on the bravery of the guys who strap themselves into several tons of explosives to shoot themselves into space on a regular basis despite the risks. And it IS a risky endeavor, every time you go up. Space and the hardware for getting you there is not forgiving. Every astronaut knows each launch could be his last, they do it anyway. I think the Challenger incident was when most of America really started losing its taste for space exploration. Sure we had some problems in the 60's when we were trying to get to the Moon, but the Space Shuttle looked like a commercial airline and had been functioning pretty well. We'd thought we'd conquered space and going there was routine, then that happened. Back then most kids seemed to want to grow up to be a fireman or an astronaut. Now it seems like "astronaut" is off the table. As much as I didn't like the shuttle (expensive pork-laden boondoggle) at least we had our launch capability for manned missions. Being stuck at the bottom of the gravity well really doesn't have to be an insurmountable problem. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Naturally! I think the only channel my grandparents were able to get in the 70s was PBS, and I got exposed to a good deal of Monty Python in my early years. Don't think I actually saw the Holy Grail until college, though. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Maybe they just haven't had the right one. Back in the day there was a place in Montgomery that served a warm cream cheese brownie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. IIRC they also had the best apple pie I've ever had. Hm. Now I want to do some baking . I think I could get pretty close to their result without a huge amount of effort, but that's not really a super power I'd want to have. It would definitely screw up my wing loading. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I tried to and then the EPA cited me for "Habitat Destruction"! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

UGH. It's 15F here right now and we're looking at a few inches of snow starting early evening. I'm over it. Want me to send some chicken noodle jello your way? I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Leviticus stresses that if the seed of copulation (or probably you know, any other goop) falls on you, you should wash immediately and be unclean until the even. Maybe a lot of people didn't, but you're supposed to. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I'm pretty sure I've figured out what it's all about. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I've seen a couple of people do that in Longmont. At the speeds people drive down my street, seems like a quick path to a Darwin Award to me. Not, I suspect, that lights or reflectors would help that much with some of these drivers. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Can I go back to Eloy again? Please? I promise to sit in the back of the plane and not bother anyone. Or go on any wingsuit jumps. Oh well. I have a nice pot of chicken noodle soup on. Very tasty. Once I get the rest of it stashed away in the fridge in some tupperware, it'll turn into chicken noodle jello. That's almost as good! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Most of the CS classes I took had very little to do with programming in a business environment. And even though a couple of them may have been applicable, I've seen very few other programmers actually apply what they learned there in a business environment. Take Data Structures. Perfect example. I took it in college and since then have probably written 8 or 9 linked list implementations (Which usually have FIFO and LIFO stack accessor functions built in,) 2 or 3 hash tables and a LOT of btrees at various companies. I've never seen another professional programmer write an implementation of any of those things. Mmm scratch that, there were some excellent examples in the original AT&T UNIX source when I had to audit it for security holes. Those guys were truly exceptional programmers. Admittedly it's not such a big deal with the advent of Java, but it's not that common that I see people use the data structures java gives them correctly either. They just put everything in a hash and access it with hard-coded strings. Brilliant. I got a clue as to why when my nephew asked me some questions about the CS class he was taking a couple months ago. One of the items on his assignment was trying to introduce them to design patterns and wanted them to write a singleton as an example. A fucking singleton! Sure it's easy (As long as you're not in a multi-threaded environment,) but they've been so abused (probably because they're the first and often only one anyone ever learns,) that there's no way in hell you're ever getting one past a design review board. Even when one might be justified. People grumble and say they're better than global variables, but they're not! Here's a second one for me, since it's just us talking here. I've justified the use of GOTO in C programs three times over the course of my 20+ year career. I probably could have worked around using them, but I really didn't want to. I delight in the idea that somewhere deep in the General Electric inventory system still lives a GOTO that I put there. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Rubber bands. Packing tool. Beer. That pretty much covers it. I'm pretty sure one of Newton's laws states that if you spring for the top shelf helmet, you'll lose it on the very next jump. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I... thought they were the same thing... I can do a frighteningly accurate Bill Clinton voice when I put my mind to it. Sadly, I have to get into character by saying "I'd like to hump Monica Lewinsky", which pretty much kills the act at children's parties. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Mmm, if I had a do-over I'd put in about half an hour (3x10 minute sessions over the course of a week or two) in a vertical wind tunnel learning to body fly a bit before getting in the sky. Probably would have saved me a couple of AFF repeats, which would have more than paid for the tunnel time. Some people will belittle tunnel time, saying it doesn't teach you to be altitude aware or how to fly a canopy. Personally I think knowing a bit about how to react when the air hits you before getting out of the airplane would be helpful. You can also do practice touches in the tunnel. Plus it gives you something to do until the weather gets nicer. Heh heh heh. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I'd think neon colored parachutes would be a lot easier to find if you ever have to cut away. I had an awesome idea for parachute colors; camouflage on top and blue and white tie-die on the bottom. I'd totally pull the trigger on that one if I didn't think I'd die in a mid-air collision the first time I jumped it. I like my rainbow-colored one. You can't use the excuse that you're color-blind for not seeing me! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

/me adjusts his monocle disapprovingly I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Space aged polymers. Or maybe brown wax. I can't even touch the stuff ever since I took that chocolate cooking class and got my hands on some real chocolate. We used Valhrona for the class. We're starting to catch on in the USA and you can find decent-quality US-Sourced chocolate if you know where to look. Whatever my friend Robin uses at her store is awesome. I'd be a mite surprised if she told me she made her own, but not THAT surprised. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

Bwahaha! Nice! I tried jumping in my street clothes right after I got out of AFF, but the coaches kept making me put the student jumpsuits back on (I fall like a bat out of hell) so I finally broke down and bought a brand X one off our gear store's equipment rack. It still gets a bit funky mind you, but at least I can occasionally wash it if I get too much dirt on it. If you're studying to be a rigger and you bought your own sewing machine, you could probably make your own. I keep threatening to have the leatherworker in downtown Longmont make a leather one for me, but I'd only be able to wear it in the winter, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't do anything good for my fall rate. I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

You don't drink it! Er... do you? I thought it was just for making pancakes with it... I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?

I don't really care what the police think. Or your inappropriate wisecracks. I didn't go whine to a mod about your post, I handled it my self with a PM to you just like I did to David Johns., I havent opened your two PMs or David why should I ? FWIW My one and only wife and I will celebrate our 39th wedding this satuday. When your into a relationship that long and deep I know exactly who and what I'm married to.

Hey, you know, I thought of a great way not to get involved in scandals while in office! Don't do things that are illegal or immoral! I'm trying to teach myself how to set things on fire with my mind. Hey... is it hot in here?