DrewEckhardt

No. There are few places in nature where one can fall thousands of feet so we never got enough chances for our primitive reptilian brains to recognize them and evolve a fear. Getting out the door early in your skydiving career is a scary unknown thing but not a frightening fear of heights situation. It's not like climbing over the railing on a 486' bridge and jumping (your brain does recognize that as a high place and it's terrifying at first). OTOH, you still need to fly from opening altitude (4500 feet) down to ground level. That could be relaxing like flying in a plane or not. You pay your money and take your chances. If you can handle riding in a glass elevator where you know you can't fall out you're more likely to be fine. If not skydiving probably is not a sport for you.

Hell no. I'd move closer (I did down size from a 1400 square foot town house to a 500 square foot studio apartment to be closer - two people and a cat don't need much space) but wouldn't be willing to go that far more than once every few weeks. I commuted by bicycle for about 1:40 four days a week, although that didn't really count since I'd otherwise ride for 60-75 minutes making the commuting loss 25-40 minutes or 12.5 - 20 minutes each way which is vaguely reasonable.

Hell no. I'd move closer (I did down size from a 1400 square foot town house to a 500 square foot studio apartment to be closer - two people and a cat don't need much space) but wouldn't be willing to go that far more than once every few weeks. I commuted by bicycle for about 1:40 four days a week, although that didn't really count since I'd otherwise ride for 60-75 minutes making the commuting loss 25-40 minutes or 12.5 - 20 minutes each way which is vaguely reasonable.

It depends. Import duty depends on what you're importing and it may or may not be collected.

Sure. Dated 2003-2005 and have been happily married since then. Like any other relationship.

12. My Cypres just timed out. 14. 16. I did upgrade to 9 cogs after wearing out the first cassette and finding my favorite combination discontinued. I also switched cranksets after wearing out the big ring and first bottom bracket. I've worn out my rear derailleur and will be moving to 10 cogs once I get done with my current chain since the 2001 derailleur geometry change precludes getting a new replacement and most of the small parts have been discontinued for my shifters. I've worn out the right shifter a bunch of times, but Campagnolo ergo levers are rebuildable so that wasn't a big deal. 11. With 110,000 miles on it and just a few thousand new miles added each year I wouldn't be surprised to get another decade. Less money spent on junk means it's not painful to save for retirement and leaves more money for other things like food and travel.

FYI, the airlines' liability for international travel is limited to about $1800 per passenger.

The 1911 probably has the most religious following of any firearm in history. While you should join the flock and buy one (or more) to pay homage to St. John Moses Browning that doesn't make it the right tool for all jobs. No. Guns like Glock's, the HK P7, and double action revolvers have no manual safety you need to worry about and are therefore easier to use. A steel framed gun like a full-size 1911 is more likely to function reliably when limp wristed than a light plastic pistol although a revolver is even harder to make malfunction and if it doesn't go off you just pull the trigger again instead of manipulating the slide which isn't always enough. No because affordable 1911s have a lot of slop in the mechanics. An HK P7 has the barrel attached to the frame so that's not an issue. For hundreds of dollars (not thousands) modern designs like the Glock tend to about about twice as accurate. While 1911s have been tweaked to make them more reliable (my Para Ordnance has a ramped barrel like modern designs) the newer plastic pistols (Glock, HK USP, etc.) originally designed to feed hollow point bullets are more reliable. As much as I like to shoot my Para Ordnance I wouldn't trust it for social work like my HK USP. Revolvers are even more reliable. No. They work well and are affordable. But you can do better with a single stack plastic pistol. They can be designed for a smaller/shorter cartridge like .380/9mm/.40 S&W and add less grip circumference because the grip panels are integral to the frame instead of add-ons. Revolver grips can be smaller too. You should fix that. Practical pistol (IPSC, IDPA, your local gun club's monthly all-steel match) is oodles of fun.

It should also fit some one 5'9 with a 30" inseam or a long legged guy 6'6" with a 39" inseam because torso length is the determining factor. A rule of thumb for main lift web size is height - inseam - 20 all measured in inches. I'm 5'10 with a 30.5" inseam and have custom rigs with 19-20" main lift webs that fit perfectly.

It depends on technique. I can park my Samurai 105 loaded at 1.8 pounds per square foot in the middle of the pea gravel on a summer day at 5000 feet above sea level (8000+ foot density altitude) with a couple steps. That takes bleeding off speed for a while sinking a bit below standing height and adding a little toggle more abruptly to pop back up and slow down before lift runs out. Many (if not most) people put their feet down before the canopy is done flying and/or settle for the speed that's left over when the canopy is flying fairly flat. That approach becomes less tolerable as wing loading and density altitude go up and a head wind becomes no wind and then a tail wind. Assuming you can manage decent accuracy for one jump, you can plane-out and aim to end in the pea gravel (if you don't stand up the landing the cushion will be nice) and keep flying with your feet off the ground until the canopy drops.

They've watched you make low turns to down-wind landings on concrete off the dropzone on the sunset load? Thats the sort of situation you're sizing the canopy for - the cute chicks flash the pilot for extra altitude, some one in your group gets hypoxic and gets their foot caught on the seatbelt so you take forever to climb out, have a long spot, don't see power lines until late, and make a low 90 degree turn to avoid them. Being able to land cross-wind, up-hill, down-hill, and with post-planeout turns are all important too. If they haven't seen that they don't have the frame of reference to make any recommendation. If they have chances are they're not qualified to make a recommendation. Coach and instructor ratings mean very little. I knew four instructors who killed themselves under canopy and can't count how many broke bones. Notable exceptions with the experience to make recommendations are Brian Germain and Scott Miller who've been around long enough (five digit jump numbers and decades in the sport), travelled to get perspective away from their home DZ, don't accept that x% of jumpers just get broken, and know a lot about teaching. If they're not hanging out at your drop zone I'd start with Brian's WNE (Wingloading Never Exceed formula, which lets you jump a 1.2 pound/square foot wingloading that gets you to a 210) and only listen to your local advice when it's more conservative. Safety aside you can have more fun under a larger canopy that you're comfortable with than a smaller newer one. Few if any people only jump solo on their own-pass to guarantee no conflicts with other canopies (perhaps a tandem video guy who wants to swoop before getting their landing). I did meet a Microsoft engineer who only did solos in spite of triple digit jump numbers but even he didn't insist on his own pass. Few people refuse to jump when the winds are changing direction or may change direction because of weather moving in on the horizon. Your chances of landing cross-wind/down-wind because you're following the pattern are high and if you choose to land into the wind instead you're likely to make a low turn or need to turn to avoid other people. Few if any people look down, see the spot is long, and climb-back in for a $20+ plane ride down when the pilot won't do go-arounds due to daylight or DZO dictates on fuel consumption. There are lots of things which you're unlikely to avoid. That's not consistent with choosing advice that looks funner to follow from less experienced instructors over accepted experts with more conservative ideas.

Better shorter video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpkIOeL7VUM&feature=related

Sure. California will be able to stand on its own as the 8th largest economy in the world and the rest of you guys can figure out how to replace the $.22 out of each tax federal tax dollar ($290B in 2005) collected from us and not returned as federal spending.

There are plenty of progressive steps. Canopies are generally sold in 10-20 square foot size increments (with a few vendors willing to make in-between sizes) and several degrees of responsiveness to control input and tendency to dive. Any size of diving front riser turn is possible starting at 0 degrees with flatter turns before or after allowing curved speed inducing maneuvers that aren't multiples of 90 degrees to fit into a standard landing pattern.

Although I bet that minimum wage employees currently earning $9.92 prefer that to the $0.00 that goes with no job. When the cost of labor exceeds its value companies find ways to make do with fewer more productive employees and market alternatives. The new Fresh and Easy grocery store down the street from me has no butchers. All meat and sea food packaging is done in a central location where they can keep fewer butchers busy all day instead of having ones in each store stand around waiting for customers. It has no cash registers or cashiers. They've all been replaced by self-service lanes. Employees get paged to check IDs for alcohol sales or handle problems with the automation. Usually there's an employee or two near the checkout area so that happens quickly although I couldn't say whether that's actually a full-time position or just where they end up when they don't need to stock or do other things.

"rarefied air molecules" was my favorite line.

How do you get steam ? Geothermal.

Sounds like somebody has been feeding you a line of shit. 100-200 jumps on an early canopy is typical and in-line with Brian Germain's 1.0 + .1/100 jumps Wingloading Never Exceed formula. For example, you have a 180 pound guy with 30 pounds of gear for a 210 pound exit weight under a 210 for a 1.0 + 0 wing loading, he down sizes after 100 jumps to a 190 at 1.10 pounds per square foot, puts 150 jumps on that and at 250 total downsizes to a 170 at 1.24 pounds per square foot, etc. While not sufficient to master the canopy it should be enough to learn the survival skills like reasonable accuracy, down-wind/cross-wind landings, up-hill and down-hill landings, turning after plane-out, making flat turns, landing from brakes, arresting a dive, etc. With only the first few hundred jumps under your belt down-sizing within Brian's limits is also a less dangerous path to skydiving excitement than mastering an early canopy with aggressive turning approaches. If you're older, wiser, and don't suffer from the testosterone poisoning which leads to smaller canopies so you keep the canopy longer than expected the worst things likely to happen are needing to put new lines on it for a few hundred dollars and putting off jumping a custom parachute in your colors.

Exotic and figured hardwood lumber to build new cabinets for my favorite speakers that will be more like works of art and less like something you'd find in the bachelor pad where I built the originals. zebra wood sides which coordinate very nicely with our decor curly maple fronts and backs (the picture is a piece of one of my boards) Gaboon ebony trim between the two (still need to pick boards. I only need 1/2" square with a longest length of 30" so that shouldn't be hard) The drawer chest example is not mine; it comes from the web and shows what happens when you finish curly maple with shellac.

Record prosecutions for felony re-entry (he almost matched Bush 43's career total in his first three years!), Goldman-Sachs employees in key cabinet roles so the financial industry is well-represented, increases in GSE mortgage fees to make private industry more competitive, limited increases in Government paid health insurance, etc. It's nice to have a real conservative in the oval office not like that liberal bed-wetter Bush 43 pushing a progressive agenda with stuff like Medicare Part D and anti-gun crap like his executive order banning import of pre-1994 regular capacity magazines.

The idea is to buy into someplace less expensive then make a lot of noise about the things that made it less costly so you can have a more affordable mortgage for a nice place than if you bought one to begin with.

This should be about sleazy real-estate agents neglecting their fiduciary duty to their clients by not protecting them with the loan contingency in their fill-in-the-blank contracts, not banks (doing nothing wrong here), or peer to peer lending (just cleaning up some of the mess made by the steal-estate agent).

The deposit is refundable when one of many contingencies isn't satisfied without being waived. Including a loan contingency is prudent and the Realtor(TM) forms have one spelled out with blanks and check boxes. It can specify 1) Amount of the loan(s). 2) Type of the loan(s) (fixed, variable). 3) Maximum rate(s). 4) Maximum points paid to achieve that. 5) Any additional financing terms (30 years, 15 years, 5/1 ARM, etc.) If my bank wanted more than 25% down, a fraction of a percent above the rate I'd been quoted, or more than 1 point and no one else matched those terms within 17 days after my offer was accepted I would have walked away from my last purchase contract with my deposit.

Tell me this, The inheritance tax is there... how does 'estate planning' avoid it? By moving assets out of your estate before you die so they aren't subject to the death tax. Individuals can give other individuals a $13,000 gift each year without it counting against their lifetime gift tax exclusion and married couples can double that. That can be combined with other tricks. For instance, you could pay 35% in taxes to convert an IRA into a Roth IRA prior to giving it and effectively move $39,780 out of your estate to each beneficiary per year or $79,500 for a pair of children. By the time you actually die the gifts can have appreciated substantially for an even greater reduction in taxes compared to what you'd have paid if you held the assets until you died. You can put life insurance in an irrevocable trust and have the trust pay the premiums so the payout (millions) doesn't pass through your estate which is subject to the death tax. Etc.

In rugby play only stops when the ball goes out of bounds, there's a penalty, or some one gets hurt. It does not stop to let the players catch their breath after a tackle. It definitely does not stop when a coach whines. That makes the game more exciting than American football but less suitable for television (the abbreviated sevens variant with seven players not fifteen and seven minute halves instead of forty might work).