Frodo

Me & my dad will be driving to Grand Canyon this week, and we'll be passing through New Mexico so I was wondering - what's there to visit? which places, cities, natural wonders, and so on are of interest? (unfortunately dropzones are not included ) nothing that takes too much time though, b/c it would distract from our main goal and we only have 3-4 days. thanks!

Haven't been to that one though it is very near Austin. The one I've been to sure does rock - Austin Skydiving Center in Lexington TX! Did 2 more jumps there on Saturday morning I don't see the DZ mentioned a lot on the forums, in fact hardly at all, but the atmosphere and the peeps are great and deserve lots of praise. as for Temple, i sure do want to visit it after getting my A, along with SDSM, SD Houston, Spaceland, and whatever else isn't far from home.

Ok, finally they've got a skydiving photo over there. Problem: too many sentimental peeps (bears and crying kids get more votes wrooong!!! no appreciation for the beauty of freefall). Let's all vote for the cool sunset exit pic! Week In Pictures

I wouldn't trust the trailers you see on TV. NeedForSpeed Hot Pursuit 2 also looked great in commercials but turned out to be a majorly crappy game.

The new game is here!! I'm installing it right now. Requries 2 gigs of space and is on 2 CDs. Any other fans of the Hitman series here? Have you played the previous two versions? Which one did you like more? Have you got your H:C copy yet? What do you think about the new game? etc etc. Tell us all you can

One of the coolest things I ever saw in my life - live pictures from a spacecraft launch!! We've come a looong way. [url http://www.foxnews.com]These folks[url].

this is a bit uncharacteristic of CNN - normally they are the only ones who show live stuff while other channels continue their political discussions. Now it was FAUX News who showed it live. nothing special though. ('cept that nothing went wrong with a russian piece of equipment :)) edit> if ur reception is poor, go here - other sources of streaming video.

noice :) what did you use? is that a super-telephoto lens? like, something around 600 or 1200mm?

I c what you mean. yeah those are some of the best pictures I've seen. they're so good that i had to decide between ~20% of all the photos in the slideshow. What I dont get is that most people choose some sentimental or patriotic (=boring) stuff over really great images of nature, or ordinary life, or some special occasions like the millenium celebration, when they are masterfully caught by the photographer in an unusual way. Flame me as much as you want but the picture of the bird called "I get misty" gets my vote 10 times over the "My daddy, my hero" thing.

I'm single... any takers? I can be nice and caring, I can make an omelette or mash potatoes, and... and... I jump out of airplanes call 555-SINGLE1 for a FREE brochure. ...waiting...

Thanks everyone, 'specially 30960. Yeah that story is believable - when i met a group of people in a big auditorium who speak the same language i do (they're my best friends now), at first they seemed to be doing something wrong ("what?! you dont play games before hw? you dont skydive? you basically dont know how to have fun?" See i was that stupid). But somehow they have 3.5+ GPAs, and they don't think much of it, it just kind of comes naturally. I'm sometimes embarassed to answer the question "what year are you in?"... cos I'm classified as Senior mainly b/c I transferred lots of hours from elsewhere... well, I'm embarassed b/c a senior must've figured out by now how to study! Yeah, I'll figure it out. Thanks 4 support

I overslept today and so missed the time I allocated myself for studying for that test. So I won't go to the test cos I simply don't know anything. This kind of lame excuse is characteristic of this whole semester for me. In the fall the excuse (for failing a math course) was my broken ankle; now my general excuse is that my part-time job took too much time from me. But fact is, I'm just not interested in studying. Things that I do a lot: read, go camping, autocross, a skydive every now and again, bike, learn to play guitar. Things like that. I'm having fun instead of studying well, while all of my friends have fun and do well in their classes. What's the recipe? How can I do that too? Thanks.

I concur. spend $20 and attend an autocross event, drive around cones like crazy, talk to experienced folks, and by the end of the day youll be a much more confident driver.

makes demo jumps; knows a helluva lot about this sport; what else, i guess jumped w/ a belly-mounted reserve

i heard that story too, and at first was of the same opinion as you, but then i recalled that on the very same day the GPS also showed another figure for max speed - 388km/h!! my car, or pretty much any other (ok Lambo maybe but i'm not a lucky owner), doesnt go that fast. So thats just an error caused by inaccuracies of the gps locating itself... same could be with my 195. so that pic doesnt really prove anything methinks A video is another story... it's possible to simply pace the car as it passes an object whose length is well-known. BTW do you have a link to that video story?

what a stupid mofo, he almost made it past the airbag i bet he'll be getting good separation from objects at pull time, in case he ever tries BASE.

Umm... well... the SHORT BUS is coming for me.

I said I was going to a Mazda-organized event (it was sort of like autocross, only fake), not that I own one. My car's a BMW 7-series, it was made in late 80-s... its got a manual tranny, hehe, me likes me car btw it has one airbag, and i'm a little concerned - after all, its old, is there a risk of it malfunctioning (firing when not asked for)?... did they make good airbags 15 years ago?

Actually I was on my way to Mazda Rev-it-up going from Austin to a place between Houston and Galveston. Well, I made a good choice of route - instead of the usual hwy290 I took 71, which turned out to be: 1) a more scenic drive 2) faster, 3) safer, 4) more fun! It's faster b/c 71 doesnt wind back and forth like 290 does so you can go really fast w/o worrying bout cops most of the time, and safer b/c the oncoming traffic is always separated by either a concrete wall or a wide median. And people are like really cool, they dont mind racing with ya for a while, in a kind of "healthy" way - not aggressively, but with a sense of camaraderie (as in "screw the limit"). Anyway, I hit 121mph (which you can see in the GPS pic as 195km/h, at the bottom) at 5,000rpm in 5th gear. I know I know, this is *baaad* but it's just the nature of this road - lots of straights, few places for cops, and my good ol' car. Besides last time i was @ 120mph was in January, and I was starving to reach terminal velocity, one way or another Any of you doing triple-digit speeds on a regular basis? Do you get pulled over often? Do you have a radar detector? P.S. Houston drivers (and vicinity) - you rock!! Austin drivers - well, you kinda don't

is that a Canon PowerShot SD-something in the last pic?

Should I talk to a local company about hosting my site, or should it be done online, dependless on physical location? How much does it cost per year? How can I add stuff like guestbook or polls to my site? Do i need to pay a web-designer, or can I do it myself?

Anyone going to the South-by-Southwest festival? It looks like a really big thing, I've been hearing about it on the radio 24/7. SXSW Austn360 My question is, do you know which venues are the best? Where should I go? Modest Mouse @ La Zona Rosa sounds good.

K, here's a question: what exactly does it mean when an in-car CD-player is "XM Ready"?

This is so cool! $100 receiver (the orange thingy) + $70 home kit + $10/month. 68 music channels, commercial-free (I think they used to be ALMOST ads-free, but now it's 100%), and a bunch of news, comedy, traffic etc. channels (which do have ads). Anyone else got this piece of global communications? I just love this kind of hitech - satellite radio, GPS, even music streaming from the web. That's just amazing stuff imho

Thank you thank you