DrewEckhardt

This is my favorite sort of stapler: http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/mediawebserver?66666UuZjcFSLXTt5X&2mx46EV76EbHSHVs6EVs6E666666-- It lets you make a real punk-rock fashion statement that even shows up on X-rays! The piercings are temporary and only scar a little.

With the high cost of living in desireable places that's often the case for people at or before the start of their careers. Studio apartments run $1000-$2000/month in nice cities.

Maybe i'm in the wrong show... but i like skydiving for the people the time at a DZ, and the jumping from planes. not for a perspex tube 45 min brief and a jd weatherspoon meal. I don't think it is vital to be in a tunnel, it is vital to get people into the sport proper. that is not done at airkix In the US, you can have 30 minutes of training in a wind tunnel for $325 and an hour of time or 30 minutes from planes costing $3500 (2-way + camera) or $5500 (4-way + camera) spread over 3 days. This assumes block tunnel time at $650 an hour, $22 jump tickets, $6 pack jobs, and enough rigs + packers + lift capacity to average 13+ loads a day. Practically speaking its not possible to be a competitive skydiver without doing the bulk of freefall training in a wind tunnnel. You can have fun as a recreational belly flier (say 10-point 4-ways) without using a wind tunnel and only a few hundred jumps, but interesting freefly formations are out of reach without tunnel time or years of jumping from planes (some friends and I finally managed to build a nice 4-way round that was half head-up and half head-down once we'd all reached 1000-1500 jumps apiece).

Lots of skydivers are happily married to non-skydiving spouses. Skydiving is a big time and money sink, just like golf or skiing. You need to balance the comittment. One day a week-end instead of two still leaves plenty of time for jumping. You'll want to balance jumping and non-jumping vacations. Skydiving is more likely to kill you than golf but less likely than riding motorcycles. With a spouse you might choose to accept less risk than you would as a single person. This doesn't rule out skydiving (or even BASE jumping) but may limit the size of canopy you fly or whether you want an AAD in all your rigs. While not a lot of women skydive, you're more likely to be around young single females than in other sports and have to be more visibly very married to avoid trouble. Skydiving is harder to explain to non-participants than other sports. While accurate "We dress up in rainbow colored outfits and hold hands" doesn't really capture it. Whuffos think its a bit like square dancing with more wind and odder clothing. A wind tunnel helps "Oh, it's HARD to fly around like that." It is smellier than hobbies like playing poker (in a non-smoking environment). You'll need to shower after coming home to get rid of the jet-fuel smell.

It depends on whether you're selling diamonds, need something to affirm your status to the local chapter of the Mrs society, or fail to buy into brilliant advertising schemes. We skipped the traditional diamond ring with the savings coming in handy for a nice honey moon and smaller mortgage.

I'd bet on lower brake line length and trim; you may have problems accessing the bottom of the control range on the 120 because its not what you're used to, the 105/135 have shrunk more making it more accessible, etc. Brake settings have a _huge_ effect on how the canopy feels and meshes with your personal style. The last time I replaced the lower brake lines on my Stiletto 120 I added 6". It felt _very_ different at first. The 120 (if used) could be going out of trim. I found a 5" shrinkage over 600 jumps on my Stiletto end cell suspension lines which is significant for a small canopy. Riser length would be worth looking at too - if you have shorter risers on the 120 than your husband does on his 105 you'll have to reach farther to hit the bottom end which may not be possible if you have shorter arms.

Uuuh? yeah! you suck at flying canopies is why you broke your ankle. Any person with some competence can safely land a 220 regardless of experience, wingloading, and/or conditions. > 1600 jumps. Better than pro-rating accuracy (consistent landings within a few feet). 245. < .8 pounds/square foot (usual canopy is 105 square feet at 1.8, ~1000 jumps at 1.6-1.8) Perfect approach + accuracy with a bad call on where to land resulting in a spiral tibia+fibula fractures Whatever you're flying you have enough kinetic energy to earn an ambulance ride and surgery. The wingloading limits just help you learn enough that you're much less likely to do something which breaks you before moving to a canopy which requires more experience to deal with problems.

In many (most?) places a building permit is required to finish a basement or run any new electrical wiring. If Home Depot is in the police business they shouldn't be selling Romex to individuals without building permits.

Do we have specifics - # of jumps, jumping conditions (grass vs. desert), how the wear areas would affect performance (side-packing puts wear on the end-cell ribs which can be F111 without performance degradation)? Were these condemned canopies or ones PD sent back to customers? PD has failed the tear test on some 2000 jump canopies and relined one 10,000+ jump saber for free so they can track it and see how far it'll go.

Actually, I'd be happier if every thief knew how to use a slim-jim on cars. That way they'd just steal whatever they wanted from the car and skip the part where they break a window and perhaps screw up the window track or related pieces. We've had to repair two windows in the last four years on my wife's Honda at $250+ per incident. OTOH, $250 in window repairs from parking outside beat the $1600 we'd have spent on another garage space over the last year.

I looked at the separate caps for individual procedures from VPI. If I couldn't afford a couple of those, I'd get the insurance. Since I could, it looked like I'd come out ahead financially if I only had or two major problems in my cats' lifetime even assuming a zero return on my investment. A couple of big banks are paying over 5% on FDIC insured savings accounts. So far its been 7 years without problems apart from the brain tumor scare (feline peripheral vestibular disease which causes them to fall over is a common thing in the late summer/fall which resolves itself in a few days. would be nice if vets talked about common things like that before making referrals to pet neurologists )

A valuable employee doesn't need protection to keep _a_ job at the company for as long as there's money, but the company's losses can be a lot less than the employee's when the unique aspects of the position which caused the employee to take the job fail to materialize or disappear. A company promises you interesting work with some really smart people you could learn from. You move away from family, friends, good weather, and a decent job + stock package to get there incurring $60K in relocation costs to get there. The work isn't there, you're back filling for people who quit and won't be replaced because the project has been de-prioritized, and the guy you were going to work with got promoted to a position in a foreign country. You have a wonderful job creating a novel product, work with great people you've known for ten years, and have stock options on .25% of the company which will become very interesting if the product sells well creating an expected nine figure market cap. The senior executives get replaced, the new executive team cancels your project, lays off most of your co-workers, and brings in their own people to run the new projects. Even though you have the same salary and office you've taken a ten year step back in your job responsibilities, you loose your co-workers, and your options are going to be worthless. It would be nice if the employer risked the same monetary losses as the employee if the position changed. If I move to another company in the near future because of reorganizations I'll give up stock currently valued around 2.5 years' salary. If I move to a position which isn't as promised the new company will only be out the .25 year's salary I spend figuring that out. The new employer has 1/10th my risk.

In practice most of us don't have employment contracts. We just get an offer letter specifying title, salary, and other benefits (all of which are negotiable) that last until we or the company decide to part ways for any reason. The company can arbitrarily change what we're working on (fun to boring), who we're working with (more experienced people we can learn from to people we know more than), and the work conditions (work that ends after 8-10 hours in front of a desk to being on-call 24x7 with pages at 12,1,2,3,4,5,6, and 7 am) which are IMHO the work related reasons to work some place (you may also move to be near family or for better weather). They can incur substantial costs getting you there that you're liable for if you leave within a specified time period because you don't like those changes which aren't detailed until you want to leave. When I relocated to the pacific Northwest the tab came to $60,000 including things I knew about (Realtor commissions using an approved agent) and things I didn't ($6000 for temporary housing in a 1-bedroom apartment which becomes $9000 after you pay tax on it). Two-income households that relocate can be without the second income for a long time while the costs of living aren't any lower. You're completely out of luck on any restricted stock or options you left to get the new job which constitute over half the compensation package for senior positions at large companies. This completely disregards non-monetary costs like moving away from friends and family or a job with coworkers you've been with for over a decade. At-will employment means the employees below C-level usually bear more of the risks if things change than the employer. Unions writing the contracts instead of individuals is an orthogonal issue. I'd be curious about rank-and-file employees who've successfully negotiated employment contracts with penalties if the company changes what its doing.

Total cost should be $10-$12 a month including purchase price and maintenance for a new or used Cypres/Cypres2 (provided you don't make more than 500 jumps in 2 years on the original Cypres). That's pretty inexpensive insurance.

If a petty burglar breaks in he gets drawn on because you don't know whether he intended more (like rape) or whether he'll decide to assault some one now that he knows the home is occupied. When he stops in his tracks or turns and runs (with or without loot) as the case usually is that's the end of it. If he continues to advance in spite of having a lethal weapon pointed at him he obviously poses a threat and gets shot until that threat is neutralized. The person who got shot unambiguously chose to commit crimes and pose a threat to innocent people. The innocent people didn't chose to be victims and shouldn't risk even a knock on the head which could render them unable to work. The standard for applying deadly force is significantly greater in public because of the initial ambiguity in the other person's intent. If retreat is possible you leave. If a lesser degree of force is sufficient to stop the aggression you use it. Otherwise once you are in imminent danger of being killed or receiving great bodily injury you draw and fire until the threat is neutralized. Nope. We just think that the rights of innocent people are more important than those of people who chose to attack them. Police are paid to accept higher risks than ordinary citizens and take the job knowing that they must apply an escalation of force in which they can't go more than one level above the criminal. A few go beyond that and do questionable things.

Last time that happened to me I just ordered a couple of them on line for $6-$7 each so I'd be prepared for the next failure. Changed phone companies and phones before that happened... Beats being given The Shaft by the corner electronics store.

Bridgestone Potenza S02 Pole Position (summer). Like fresh chewed bubble gum but useless on snow. Dunlop Winter Sport M2 (winter). Good on snow and ice. On dry pavement traction probably beat the all-season Goodyears I had before.

I got my last two sets of tires from tirerack.com. Shipping cost less than local sales tax and the $100+ I saved on each set of four more than offset the free mounting and balancing I'd have gotten by buying local. That's at the $400-$500/set price point. Things are probably different for economy car tires where shipping will be far more than sales tax.

That doesn't happen. When criminals think victims will be armed they switch to non-confrontational crimes. When Florida passed their shall-issue concealed carry law robbery went down while simple theft went up. That's good, because insurance will cover my property while it can't undo an injury. When criminals think victims are disarmed they become more bold. Home invasions increased in England and Australia when you guys made it harder to keep guns at home. That's bad. Both ways the criminals get away with loot, but your chances of injury go way up if they do it when you're at home.

It's not hard given reasonable head-up flying skills (controlled rotation 360 degrees about all three axis in both directions starting and ending with a sit or stand), a beginner board, some drag up top, a suitable canopy, and a few hundred jumps to be comfortable and more likely to perform emergency procedures correctly.

I have no problem with the victim. He has a right to effective self defense which he was doing the best he could especially with a government that severely limits to use of defensive lethal force.

One with 1000+ jumps on it and a fresh line set. It'll fly like new since the fabric is still ZP, stay in the bag like F111 because the coating outside the fabric is gone, and be easier to squeeze the air out because the stitching holes have opened up. Even 50 jumps is a big step in the right direction. Everyone uses the same fabric now, so unless you buy a Silhouette which is F111 + ZP topskin you're not going to get something easier to pack like the old Triathlons. Just bite the bullet and learn tricks from good packers. Reverse S-fold, Wolmari pack, Precision Pack, proper treatment of the ears at top + leg placement with a standard pro-pack.... there are lots of ways to get canopies packed with less trouble.

While I wouldn't consider that sport, it sounds like a great way for farmers to make more money off live stock than they usually do. If its OK to pay the grocery store to pay a farmer to pay a slaughter house to kill a cow its morally fine to skip the middle men and do it yourself on something leaner and tastier.

You need to pull one handle at a time, but when people put one hand on both handles, cutaway, and have a hard pull on the cutaway they sometimes deploy the reserve before cutting away. Two on the cutaway handle makes that impossible. I've always used one hand at a time on each handle and never had problems pulling the cutaway handle with one hand. Its a pretty normal safety-day activity once-a-year.

In 1986 FBI fatally wounded a Miami bank robber with a 9mm slug but failed to stop him. In spite of the fatal wound, the criminal still managed to kill another FBI agent and wound 5. The FBI had to shoot him another 6 times with 9mm and .38 special to get him to stop. After that, the FBI switched to 10mm. Since you don't have to hump the gun around, you might as well get something that gives you better odds. Like a 12 gauge shotgun with buckshot.