DrewEckhardt

USPS had the lowest prices for Australia and the few countries I've shipped to in Europe. Since they don't charge dimensional weight they often end up 1/3 the cost of FedEx. You want to declare full value on the customs forms and pay for the insurance because sometimes they loose things. They did that to me once but paid me back for my loss and shipping costs after 30 days to declare it missing and another 30 to investigate.

Neither. The cleaning service comes every other Friday. If my parents visit immediately follows that it might be clean. Otherwise it'll be clean enough. The bed will be made because we like what it looks like and that keeps the crums off when we eat in front of a movie.

Health care industry lobbyists have made it illegal to have a free market. You can't form groups just for buying insurance and have special tax advantages for plans sold through more efficient sales channels. Health insurance companies are exempt from anti-trust laws. This sort of crap means that a one day hospital stay for surgery has a list price of $38,174 that Aetna pays $13,461 for. If making the equivalent of non-urgent mail illegal for private practices can do what it does for the US postal system it'd be a great trade off. The Post office seems to do a fine job delivering small electronics parts orders (8 ounces or less) from Digikeyin Minesota to California in 2 days with Saturday delivery. Or next day from Campbell California. It's a valid comparison. According to the USPS, 203 billion pieces of mail were shipped in 2008. 7 billion is just 3.4 cents per piece. So when the government does health care it can be 2.9% the private cost instead of 2.8%.

Two engineers work great. Concessions to physics for home theater are possible (you can have a video projector which weighs more than she does and the reaction to sub-woofers in the bedroom is "I think we need a nicer stereo stand to match" not "what the hell are you thinking"), she can solve your RF problems, you can still get your weekly fill of fun word-play when your intelligent co-workers quit or get forced out, and she'll come with her own tool set so you don't have to worry about yours disappearing to who-knows-where.

No. I once went to 23,500 AGL for $40 and change. It was cold. My arms felt like they were going to fall off. I should have paid for 2 regular jumps which would have been at 12,000-14,000 AGL and saved the rest for beer money. 16,000 is plenty. You get a longer free fall but don't freeze or work too hard. This isn't about being cheap - I thought $350 for the B-17 ride with bomb-bay exit and $90 for the 727 cargo jet were both worthwhile.

I'd love health care to run like the post office. While it costs me $16 to mail a letter privately (say, via FedEx second day where I have to drop it off) the post office makes do on just $.44 to provide door-to-door service with no extras for more expensive customers like those living in rural areas (they'll even fly mail in by plane) and usually gets it there just as fast Going to the post office off peak hours doesn't involve any waiting. The last few times I've seen a medical professional off-peak hours it's been half an hour with a scheduled appointment, plus extras if I had to be sent down the hall for an X-ray. And if I really want, I can pay twenty times as much to get the same premium service (things like next day) I get from private companies at a competitive rate. Of course this isn't relevant, because the public option has been eliminated for all but 80,000,000 of us (on which we spend as much as other nations do to insure all their populations).

My experience has been that Thomas search results don't produce long-lived links. http://thomas.loc.gov The passed House Bill is H.R. 3962 (H.R. 3200 is dead with its objectionable provisions like the public plan). The Senate finance Commitee Bill was S. 1796 Cornell has a nice on-line version of US law http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/ Just reading the bill isn't enough. You have to look at how it works which requires knowledge of the existing situation - legal and otherwise. For instance, it requires everyone to get health insurance. Which includes coverage for pre-existing conditions (I'm not sure what pricing variations are allowed here). Which has a maximum difference based on age of 2:1. With young people able to get health insurance for $75 a month and old people $300+, young people's rates must go up to compensate. Which requires no-copay coverage of preventative treatment. Where you got a high deductible policy because you don't care about a $100 office visit but don't want to go bankrupt for a $40,000 broken leg that's going to raise your rates. There are also provisions for government assistance on insurance premiums. If you're not well off but not poor that lessens the impact. If you're some sort of young professional who gets paid well enough not to share an apartment in a high-cost of living area but not one that gets employer coverage that could hurt. Then there's the long term change. Bills like to delegate things to the secretary of this or that where the secretary is an executive branch appointee. How much latitude do they have? Plus secondary effects. Where employers have to provide health insurance or pay a penalty, what's that going to do to employment among old people (who raise group rates) or families (who have more people)? While illegal to discriminate based on age, it's hard to prove and filtering out people who have too much experience isn't illegal. 50+ people already have problems getting jobs at small companies. People more likely to have families may find themselves moving into the same situation.

Too much of the wrong drugs will stop your heart in your 20s. One of my friends had his heart incident before reaching 30. After wards he quit drugs and was fine.

Having the three major Abrahamic religions represented within a few blocks seems pretty American to me, even near the former world trade center.

30k! Is it really that much on average, or do you just have an expensive hospital? When I broke my arm it was only about $6500 ($8500 in today's dollars), which included a day at the hospital. Maybe I ended up with a good deal, or are broken legs that much more expensive? eric They installed a titanium IM nail with four screws (which took an orthopedic surgeon and anesthesiologist) and I may have spent 3 days in the hospital (obviously, I was on drugs after getting admitted to the hospital). None of that was inexpensive.

You do know that a broken leg can cost $30,000 - $40,000 for your first hospital stay? Complications make things even more expensive - my bone graft has run $20,000 so far at the insurance company's negotiated rates (the bills total $56,000 at list price). Straight-in landings into a wide open grassy field are not a big deal. How many times have you landed out, landed down wind, landed cross-wind, landed up-hill, landed down-hill, made 90 degree turns 50 feet off the ground, and landed with induced speed off the front risers? Those are the sorts of things which get combined to save your butt when cute girls flash the pilot on sunset load so you have extra altitude, your climbout is delayed because your buddy got hypoxic and got his foot stuck on a seat belt, you have a bad spot, land out, don't see an obstacle in the low light until the last instant, and turn 90 degrees at 50 feet for a down-wind landing on an asphalt road with extra speed because the turn wasn't as flat as it should be. If you haven't done them you should do so in a controlled environment before you need to. If they scare you too much you need to be under a bigger canopy. Turning after plane-out is important too. Your chances of using the reserve are about 1 in 600. Your chances of landing the main are about 599 in 600. I'd worry a lot more about the main.

C'mon, it's UTAH, it's lucky to be on the map. The multiple wives thing probably tipped the scales in its favor. (I love Utah)

I can't stand going to dentists. That causes me more anxiety than free fall jumps from 280', 212' PCA jumps, 5000 square foot landing areas with no outs, and bone transplants from my hip to my tibia. I feel like I can't breath with all the tools and hands in my mouth, it always hurts, often makes me feel like puking, and it takes hours to be over. 3 times in 18 years is way too often (It'd be zero if I didn't get married and get talked into it by my wife talked me into going). I got gas last time and it sucked less apart from the $150 for 30 minutes.

I detoured through Amsterdam whilst lecturing in Germany for one of the first three international Linux conferences and twice on my honeymoon (it's nice to stop someplace close to one end of your trans-Atlantic flight, catch your breath, and then continue on your way after you have more sleep). I like walking in increasingly large concentric circles stopping at anything interesting. Herring is nice, John Lenon's sketches at the Erotic museum are interesting, some of the other Dutch food is decent, Van Gogh is interesting, the coffee shops are good, and the pastry shops are just fine after visiting the coffee shops which sell joints of different flavors in convenient five packs. One of the ladies in the red light district said she'd do both me and my wife; as a single person you might find some one like her. The same strategy works for other metropolitan areas although the specifics vary. Madrid and Barcelona have better music, Berlin has a better bar scene, Barcelona has better architecture, it's all different and fun.

No, the sexes just vary in what they like. I like buying router bits. There's something about a piece of steel and carbide as big as your fist with razor sharp edges. I like buying beer. The labels are nice. It's thrilling to discover something new that looks tasty. Just the other week I took home a couple bottles of Moylan's Irish Red Ale with live yeast. I like using router bits and drinking beer too (albeit not at the same time - that could get very painful), The red was nice, slightly sweet, and not overly carbonated reminding me a bit of the Walnut Brewery's James Red I used to drink on draught from a cask. I think I'll have a pint or two when I get done shopping.

Jimmy Pouchert and Marta Empinotti Jimmy and Claire Halliday and I think at least one other BASE jumping couple got engaged at the Go Fast games a few years ago.

To balance the reporting of negative incidents in the media. 11,000,000 - 17,000,000 Holocaust victims would disagree about how peaceful life is there if they were still alive. At our current rate, it's going to take 1375 - 2125 years for murderers using handguns to match that body count.

1.3 is an accident waiting to happen. Into the wind in a wide-open grassy field it's not a big deal. At dusk with a low turn to avoid unseen power lines to a down-wind landing on asphalt (think about what happens on the sunset load when the cute chicks flash the pilot for extra altitude and some one in your group gets hypoxic and gets their foot caught on the seatbelt so you take forever to climb out and have a long spot) it's a huge deal. Things seem to happen much faster, you may not stay flat enough in the turn to avoid a painful impact, and you won't get away with running out a landing where you didn't flare all the way. Either you've made lots of turns to avoid obstacles up, down, and cross-wind and know what it's like to deal with (in which case you have bad judgement and shouldn't be jumping a smaller canopy) or haven't (in which case you don't have the experience needed to decide for yourself). I said nothing because after people have been to the orthopaedic surgeon I've only seen one return with no morgue visits (people wise up) and most people only break without dieing at that wing loading. A jumper's first broken bone is an important learning experience which prevents more serious harm. Replacing that experience with something worse won't be good for the future of skydiving.

Not all together true... I can't speak from experience but I can't tell you how many times I've heard experienced jumpers say that some of their nicest openings were after some of their worst pack jobs. When you can't consistently pack well there's some chance that whatever random changes you made will produce a better opening. Personally I find it better to find what works well and repeat it neatly and consistently so nearly every opening fits in the "nicest" category. It's faster too because a neatly folded canopy takes up less space and is therefore easier to bag. And since 6-7 minutes for a pack job leaves enough time to replace a couple of broken tube stows, pee, dirt-dive, and make the next load anything faster but sloppier wouldn't be an improvement.

The government also shouldn't have any involvement in drugs or currently legal crops that don't move across state lines but they do. The commerce clause of course. Able bodied citizens are required for companies to compete in interstate commerce. Citizens with health insurance are more likely to get treatment for medical conditions making them able to work productively. Therefore Congress has the ability to mandate health insurance for citizens. As an engineer I like to simplify things while a real Congress Critter would take more sentences to get to that point. It's an oligarchy with some limits imposed by existing governing documents like the Constitution and limited democratic input which keeps things from getting too egregious.

The Stiletto is the most responsive canopy PD has ever made. PD made all of the following canopies (Velocity, Katana) less sensitive to toggle input because John LeBlanc observed jumpers having problems with roll axis stability when landing their Stilettos. Small control inputs will quickly put the canopy into a steep dive that is not recoverable at low altitudes whether or not that's what you intend. Here's a Stiletto 150 fatality with just a 1.2 wing loading and 480 jumps: http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=3709212 The control sensitivity (especially with the brakes stowed) also makes the Stiletto more likely to spin up if you don't stay level during opening and deal with any problems immediately. At least 300 jumps, 100 jumps per .1 pounds of wingloading, enough jumps on the same size canopy in a less aggressive planform to have be comfortable with all of the usual things (flat turns, flare turns, turns after plane-out, actually turning 90 degrees at 50 feet so the first time you do that isn't in an emergency, accelerated landings, land up and down-hill, land cross-wind and down-wind, consistent landings in 10 meters) at the same canopy size which probably takes 50-100 jumps. 500 jumps would be a fine time to start with a Stiletto at 1.5 pounds per square foot if you don't choose something else for longer recovery arc length. I had 600 jumps when I got my Stiletto (the last 200 under another elliptical a size bigger) and the thing didn't always go in a straight line on landing. Bruised my heels enough that it hurt to walk for months. Spent the next 400 or 500 jumps learning how to fly it well.

Good luck! Surgery sucks but beats being stuck on the bench.

This is Willard. He's my 9 year old black cat made out of love and fur.

It's 16" and an over-all length of at least 26".

Dexter is awesome, one of the few original shows actually worth watching on TV. For those of us with better things to spend money on than Showtime (or who need to catch up), all but the current season are available on DVD/Bluray and Netflix "Watch Instantly" has the first two.