DrewEckhardt

The boats and people aren't as close as they appear (after the Blue Angels crash, the FAA got even more strict about this) that's just a side effect of shooting the photo with a long telephoto lens. As the distance to the camera increase differences in the distance between objects have less effect on the field of vision they subtend so you get a depth compression effect where everything in the picture looks like its close together. Skydiving shot from high up with a gyroscopically stabilized mount makes it look like people are going in. The government has claimed the F18 costs $4500/hour to operate. Even if possible you'd be better off sharing costs on one of the Communist-block single engined trainers like a TS-11 or L39. I've heard $800/hour in total costs for an L39 (you are burning 130 gallons of Jet-A in that time at $4 per) although they're classified as experimental and can't be flown for hire in the states.

Sure. Watch a major running race and you'll see long-legged light-weight Kenyans running like smiling gazelles in front while the rest of the pack suffers far behind. Like other animals there are environmental issues too. Poor nutrition doesn't help. While one can argue about the applicability of IQ tests, Euro-American biases in them, and specific reasons for the differences (they're starving), the average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa is 70. Aids prevention and birth control programs may need to take that into account to be effective. Outside that case, it's not too relevant. You're looking for people that exceed the norm in relevant areas - smarter engineers, more charismatic sales people, faster athletes. Race is is irrelevant.

Only if she's a contractor and not an employee at a brothel, because statutory employees are not allowed to deduct commuting costs.

That may be legal if you jump at least 89 day of the year.

300 times!!! I've been given 20mg of morphine at once and I felt that morphine rush through my body so bad I thought my heart would stop. Are you sure you're not embalmed? Jumping off something low is a bigger rush than the legal morphine which goes with bad judgment doing that.

Morphine via patient controlled analgesic pump or subcutaneous injection. Quick pain relief and no discomfort from flushing out the saline lock. Obviously not an option at home but who wants to be in hospital? I ate one 7.5-500 Lortab at 7:30 and it hadn't worked enough by 8:30 so I ate another. 15mg hydrocodone = the gold standard of 10mg morphine. Another hour later I finally had some relief. Add a couple beers to relax and I'm feeling human apart from when I move in the wrong direction. Opiate tolerance means I don't get too high and can actually function getting some work done. That's a good thing-I never liked being that out of it when I had a lower tolerance for them.

First off, who cares what the Canadians spend on there military. While I don't care per se what the Canadians spend on their military, I do care about how much I'm spending on taxes and what I'm getting in exchange. Canada's a great example of a country similar to ours which is spending 1/10th of what we are. Their currency is up 60% relative to ours arguably due to military spending. With 85% of their exports destined for the US this affects us even if we don't vacation north of the border. They send troops to places where people are suffering like Rwanda in the 1990s. Canada contributes forces to joint actions against real threats to world security like Afghanistan was. They do not shoulder the entire high cost in human lives and cash for questionable unilateral actions. When you're a nation of brown people with limited oil resources, calling the UN is more likely to get you a military response than calling the US. That response will include soldiers from over 100 countries with Canada ranked right in the middle, perhaps along with a small contingent from the US. Until the world starts paying tribute to the US they can have a response where a pile (NATO, UN peace keeping, etc) of countries each share in the costs. It doesn't take much to stay ahead of the third world countries we'll be fighting now that we won the Cold War by spending as only a capitalist country can. Ourselves maybe. But like I said before whenever shit goes down in some part of the world they always call the US. We're not solely responsible for the rest of the world. When they call we're unlikely to listen unless our companies have financial interests there in commodities like oil. Or bananas. There are lots of things which would benefit America more for $600B a year. I can come up with lots of things I could do with a $4.5K tax credit if that was split evenly between tax payers. I can come up with a lot more things to do with a 20% tax break. The time we needed to spend that much ended with the Soviet Union.

And how did you come up with those numbers or did you just pull them out of a hat? The Canadians spent 14.3B in 2004-2005, 14.6B in 2005-2006, and were expecting to spend 16.5B in 2007-2008. Off Google. I took the liberty of rounding up to $18B and doubling since we have a second smaller border to our south. Start with our $532.8B military budget, add in the $120B we've spent in the middle east off-budget, ignore the pieces of military spending which have been shifted elsewhere (nuclear, veteransprograms, etc), and you have over $650B. 650B - 36B = 614B. The IRS reports about 136 million tax returns filed. Divide and you get $4514 per tax return which is close enough to my $4000 back-of-the envelope figure,. Canada is a bit bigger than the United States and is located in the same part of the world. It shares our largest border. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to defend ourselves with twice what they're spending. Do you really think that is enough for everything?

In public, I take credit for them. I'm proud of everything I produce- whether fine wood working or flatulence. Especially in the plane skydiving when it's payback. In private with my wife I used to blame my cat. Even when we were 6,000 miles away in a foreign country. Now I've decided that farting is my language of love. Some people touch, some people give gifts, I toot. Each one says "Honey, I LOVE YOU!" and a breakfast of huevos rancheros adds "A LOT!" I've decided that I'm growing more injury prone as the years go on. Sneeze and herniate a disk. Pack a parachute and get septic bursitis in my elbow. Fire and flammable gases around my tingly naughty bits seem like a really bad idea so I won't even try lighting one.

Under $18B is enough to defend Canada which is a bit bigger than the United States. Some where between that and $36B would be reasonable, since we have land borders with two countries and the Mexican/US border is shorter than the US/Canadian border. With that out of the way we could do away with the deficit or keepi it and kick a $4000 tax credit back to each tax payer.

I shot a .357 Coonan once (1911 in .357 magnum) and while fun the recoil was a _lot_ more substantial than full power .40 short and weak (which I love in my P16-40 and HK USP)

Psycho-packing helps you keep slippery canopies under control. F111 canopies pretty much pack themselves. Psycho-packing lets you hold small canopies in your hand like a football and bag them one-handed. Accuracy canopies are too big for that. No reason to do that.

I hate ice. Most of my crashes come from commuting in icy conditions, except for the 2 where I learned that I'd worn out my big chain ring and the chain would drop off when I stood on it with one of the big cogs selected.

Keltec P3AT .380. A bigger more powerful gun won't do you any good if you want to leave it at home. Not as much fun on targets but you should have other toys for that. I like my Para Ordnance P16-40 which is a full-sized 1911 with 18 rounds of .40 S&W in its fat belly.

Sometimes my ankle aches and knee hurts but I don't think of the rod itself. I can feel all four screw heads through my skin and the bumps on my tibia and fibia where the bone is growing together. That's a little wierd.

You were lucky to have Leah there - my wife Tammy was in Colorado so it took until Monday for her to come rescue me. The hospital people had the decency to cut the laces but leave my right Hanwag intact so it didn't have to give up its life after saving my ankle joint and keeping my bones inside my skin. My sock, shorts, and boxers did fall prey to their scissors. Netflix is great. I've been keeping it mostly light hearted with odd forays off the beaten path - Fiddler on the Roof the musical, the first Tarzan films from 1931, French and Saunders, The Vicar of Dibley, Cheech and Chong, Blue Hawaii with Elvis. I finally saw When Harry Met Sally. If you're going to watch romantic commedies, that one, Sleepless in Seattle, and French Kiss aren't too bad. Vicodin, Lortab, and Norco are all the same thing - hydrocodone mixed with acetaminophen. The specific combination is listed on the label with the acetaminophen abbreviated APAP for n-Acetyl-Para-AminoPhenol. All brands are available with different amounts of hydrocodone - the Norcos come in 5, 7.5, and 10mg. Purportedly 15mg of hydrocodone has the same effect as 10mg of morphine. When you have enough opiate tolerance, how much acetaminophen your liver can process is what caps the number you can take. The FDA considers 4000mg daily and 1000mg per dose to be the safe limit. The Norcos have only 325mg of acetaminophen so you can have 12 a day (3900mg APAP) if the opiates aren't a problem for you. When I left the hospital and could no longer get morphine shots for breakthrough pain I was eating 10-12 Norco 10-325s for the first few days. Two days after my release when we were driving to Boise I finally realized that I was really drugged. Some how I managed to have a pain free day a week or two ago when I didn't eat any for 24 hours but the norm seems to be 1 7.5-500 when it hurts during the day about every 8 hours and 2 at night when the stabbing nerve pain in my foot acts up. After five weeks I finally talked to a sensible doctor who knew like the rest of the medical community that opiates don't work well for nerve pain and gave me a neurontin prescription. I fell like an old person talking about my drugs with other invalids, and a criminal when talking to the prescribing doctor's people. How many did you take in the last 24 hours? 4 (down from 6 last time - I am healing). Hows the pain? The broken bones ache some, but the nerve pain hits a 7 of 10 and two pills are marginal. Geeze! Thanks! Hope all y'all continue to heal.

Chinese auto workers earn $150 a month, while the union contract with Daimler-Chrysler calls for $3000-$6000/month in America depending on pay grade. With consumers world-wide clamoring for the most they can get they're not going to accept being unable to buy products produced by cheap labor like that so it's inevitable that most manufacturing jobs are going over seas. The only advantage we have is in innovation. Americans are better at creating new ideas than the rest of the world. Mid-term that's where the jobs are headed and everyone not in that business or servicing those people will be out of luck. Since foreign countries are producing educated people (India is cranking out software engineers) and adopting American culture with our entrepreneurial spirit even that's not sustainable. Eventually, we're going to be in a position where America can't compete with the developing third world in any arena and we're going to have a collapse of wages, property values, etc. At the same time, third-world labor shortages and demand for consumer goods is going to push up the standard of living and wages in those countries. Everything should level out. The best we can do is figuring out how to make the meeting point as high as possible and cushion America's landing.

I don't know much about classic accuracy, but I believe it's fairly different to swoop accuracy. I'd check with someone more knowledgeable than I about whether the techniques you'd learn in classic accuracy would translate well... Apart from requiring awareness of wind conditions, the ability to fly a consistent pattern, and possibility of landing in a sink (following a pop-up and stall in swoop accuracy) there's no similarity between the two. Glide ratio on a big F111 seven cell is adjustable from somewhat better than 2:1 and straight down (or backwards, but that gets you a high sink rate) especially when you have something soft to crash land on. Classic accuracy is about continuous glide ratio adjustments until you reach the target. It's a slow game - forward speed in 2/3 brakes is about 11 MPH which is gradually reduced to zero. Swoop accuracy is more about setup to get you in the ball park, turn/dive adjustment to fix problems getting close, and energy management to hit the target. It's a fast game - moderately loaded (by contemporary standards) canopies are going 50+ MPH after plane-out from a 90 degree turn and you've still got a lot of speed if you fly all the way to the ground without popping up to kill your energy, Swoop accuracy is to skeet as classic accuracy is to high-power rifle. (I'm undecided whether it's a good idea for bored people on Vicodin to post).

There's probably something wrong with your Spectre. The lines may be out of trim or PD may have built the turn in. Either way, shipping it b back to them will produce a diagnosis. They also have a history of making things right when its their construction error. Get a demo sent out of something you'd like to try while it's in for repair.

They let you pivot faster about your yaw axis as a beginning sky surfer. Obviously skysurfing is inappropriate for some one who does not have a good handle on flying in a head-up position which is not possible at 65 jumps without tunnel time and even then 200+ jumps would be a good point at which you should have developed the calmness and situational awareness you'll need when things go wrong. Without a board holding your feet together you can get more rotation with your lower legs so they're unnecessary. Experienced sky surfers have moves where they use the board's surface area to get spinning really fast. Like the invisible man...

Sure. I used a set of Speedo webbed gloves when I was skysurfing. Obviously they'll affect your flying and make the handles feel different. I had some toggles that I couldn't fit my hands in while wearing gloves a lot less bulky than neoprene; checking that on the ground would be very important.

Spectra shrinkage is significant. IIRC there was a > 5" difference between the outer lines of my Stiletto 120 and inner lines due to shrinkage after 600 jumps. Openings were getting more interesting for 100-200 jumps before that even with a brake line replacement.

Owie! Good luck on the healing! WIth nothing better to do on this sunny Seattle Saturday I'll share my X-ray photos too. Like parents with baby pictures!

My previous home DZ was open 7 days a week during daylight savings. Weekdays may mean jumping a King Air instead of the Super Otter.

Chances are that George Galloway (president of Precision Aerodynamics, designed the Batwing and other canopies) knows a lot more about parachutes than your rigger. He came up with the precision pack. Mechanically, it's safer than a pro-pack because you don't need to roll the tail which in turn pulls the steering lines around towards the nose of the canopyl.