champu

Either the computing world has slowed down over the past few years or I'm just getting old and less interested in following it. My work laptop is a Dell Precision M4400 that's over two years old and it's still a hell of a machine. Also, our IT folks are pretty cool... especially considering they have to put up with a bunch of engineers all day.

I follow you. Sorry, I didn't mean the "you're embedding" in a personal sense.

There's a falacy in this argument because you're embedding a conditional check in the term "opposite sex." This conditional check is where the discrimination comes in. The debate is not about the right to marry "someone." Who the hell wants that? No one would ever bother to fight for the right to marry "someone." Marriage is a personal thing and thus people fight for the right to marry a person. Suppose you have a woman of legal age named Jill. Suppose Jack is of legal age and wants to marry Jill. That's legal if they both want to. Suppose you have someone of legal age named Pat who wants to marry Jill. You can't tell me if it's legal or not unless I tell you whether Pat is a man or a woman. It's illegal to simultaneously be a woman and to marry Jill. In this instance, a law against homosexual marriage is discriminating against women. We used to have a law that said you can't simultaneously be a woman and vote. That law was applied equally to everyone. Men didn't have the right to be a woman and vote either, so I don't see what the problem was.

If you leave enough clamps on the canopy, yeah it'll stay cocooned.

That's a nice FF3 she's got there... So... intentionally obtuse question: if marriage is a religious thing first and a state institution second, how many divorces involve a church in addition to a courtroom? Can you even do that? I mean, it's one thing to argue and file paperwork, but you just broke a promise to the [wo]man upstairs. Holy shit. It's my opinion that getting married in church and making a religious ceremony out of the whole ordeal is a feel-good, but essentially meaningless, exercise to the vast majority of heterosexual couples who do so. I think a lot of people in this country a) are Christian, b) go to church on Sundays, and c) treat marriage as a religious thing that you do in a church because that just seems to be what everyone else is doing and they don't want to go against the grain.

You know they're reading that, right?

Done.

One option would be to disband all the appropriations committees. Then reform them and don't allow anyone who had previously been a member of a given committee to be involved. They've already done the work of communicating to us who shouldn't be on said committees, so anyone else is more likely to make decisions in the best interests of the country as opposed to spending money in ways they think will get them reelected.

I don't know if you're familiar with South Park at all but there's an episode where people come back in time from the future to find work, and they take over menial jobs for really low wages and then invest it so that in the future their families are rich. Anyway, the redneck characters start the episode saying, "They took our jobs!" and they repeat it and repeat it and repeat it but as the episode goes on the drawl gets so thick that by the end they're literally just yelling, "DUR DHURP DEE DUUUURRRRRRRRR!" Anytime I read posts where people mangle politicians or pundits names or political parties to demonstrate how angrily they stand behind their viewpoint that episode is all I can think of. That said... This move by Obama is political strong-arming 101. You pick the one thing that most directly affects your oppositions' constituency, you jab there, and then you publically state that your opposition has given you no other choice. (Which is a lie, but that doesn't matter.) That said... Not raising the debt ceiling is a silly place to make a stand on budgetary issues. It's like freezing the number on one of those national debt billboards, loading it on to the back of a truck and driving off manically shouting "The debt stops here! You'll never take me alive coppers!" over your shoulder.

I'm not sure if you're going to find too many people willing to drive anywhere on a freeway out of Santa Monica this weekend. That said, I concur on Elsinore being a great dropzone... ...except for this one jerk with a blue camera helmet that jumps there...

It's not so much about smaller sizes as it is about wing loadings. In many cases a larger wing will actually yield better performance. Several years ago before they came up with rules to limit how much lead you could wear people were wearing 70-80 lbs of lead (or more) and flying 111-120 sq ft canopies loaded at 3:1 because you could make the thing swoop forever. People had so much energy coming out of their turns, though, that it just wasn't safe. Now that there are lead limits people are back flying smaller canopies again because that's really the only tool you have to get to the wing loading you want. This tends to be more self-limiting than "where can I fit some more lead pouches on myself?" And, since I don't compete, I use 500 HMA which is more about dimensional stability than it is about drag. Highly loaded canopies that are out of trim tend to give you very poor openings. I've got some jumps on a friend's XB-84 and XB-90 that had 300 HMA and it's just stupid thin. I found myself nervously inspecting all the bartacks after each jump. You can keep that nonsense.

...and I'll bet the saying, "it flies like a car and drives like a plane" holds true as well.

Full stop.

hmm... Not a whole lot of ways you could be hitting your inner right bicep on the door unless you're climbing out to the camera step, so that's probably not it. If you're launching two way stars and you take high grips from the inside around the other jumper's arms with the other person holding the bar it's possible for the other jumper's hand to smack your inner bicep on exit. Particularly if the exit timing is a little off. The last thing I can think of is if you're being particularly aggresive when you reach to pull you could be smacking your bicep into the side of the reserve container. Whether or not this is possible depends on container size, fit, and your flexibility. If it was anything besides exit or deployment you'd probably remember it.

What kind of jumps were you doing, how were you exiting the plane, and are the bruises medial or lateral?

You want Google+ Do I...

I have family. I have people I work with. I have skydiver friends. I have non-skydiver friends. These groups are separate and there are reasons for that. If I created a facebook page I would want to set the privacy settings to disallow anyone to write on my wall, disallow anyone to send me anything but private messages, disallow anyone to see an entire list of my friends, and disallow anyone to tag me in any photos. I don't even know if those options exist and I don't care because at that point it would be another e-mail address that people would have to bug me to allow them to use... which is idiotic. /edited to add... ...and while I'm ranting. I have an unlimited data plan on my cell phone. I can use it for Pandora, Netflix, Google Maps, web browsing, games, booking flights, and a great e-mail interface that's easy to use, search, and stays synced up at all times with my computer. I do NOT have an unlimited text messaging plan. I do not WANT an unlimited text messaging plan that costs nearly as much as the data plan I already have so that I can send and receive tons of little shitty four word e-mails with a crappier interface. All you mass-text, reply-all-text, and can't-get-a-complete-fucking-thought-out-in-less-than-four-messages people (you know who you are) should be ashamed of yourselves. It's like buying a stack of greeting cards from Hallmark at $2 a pop to write your grocery lists on.

To elaborate... the problem with the analogy is that you don't go to school to get grades, you go to school to get an education. If you were to audit a class and do all the same coursework/studying as if you were enrolled, you won't get a grade but you'll learn the same stuff. The grade is just a measuring stick of what you're getting out of the class, it's like a receipt. In contrast, you go to work for money. Social programs redestribute money not a measuring stick of how much money you got out of having worked. You don't collect up the receipts for all the cool stuff wealthy people are able to buy and give them to poor people, that'd be completely asinine. If the analogy was an announcement that there were plans to redistribute "learning" then it would at least sort of work, but that's nonsensical, this isn't The Matrix. Grades in themselves are not a finite resource. They are simply a measure of quality. If 100 people do a great job and get A's that has no impact on the grade's value. If 10 do a great job, 30 do average, 40 below average and 20 poor and they still all get A's the value of the grade is basically nullified. As long as you're careful with the use of the word "value" to mean usefulness or meaning and not material worth, then yes, I'd agree. I laugh at the image of having a stack of report cards sitting next to me at my desk. When someone walks in to my office and says, "We need your help to figure out a problem with widget xyz" I reach into the stack, pull out one with a few As on it, crumple it up into a ball and throw it at them. They then catch it, thank me, and leave.

To elaborate... the problem with the analogy is that you don't go to school to get grades, you go to school to get an education. If you were to audit a class and do all the same coursework/studying as if you were enrolled, you won't get a grade but you'll learn the same stuff. The grade is just a measuring stick of what you're getting out of the class, it's like a receipt. In contrast, you go to work for money. Social programs redestribute money not a measuring stick of how much money you got out of having worked. You don't collect up the receipts for all the cool stuff wealthy people are able to buy and give them to poor people, that'd be completely asinine. If the analogy was an announcement that there were plans to redistribute "learning" then it would at least sort of work, but that's nonsensical, this isn't The Matrix.

You both realize that both these ideas are idiotic, right?

Haha... this website needs to expire/auto-lock threads and/or people need to learn how to read the timestamp on posts. 1) Someone bumps a three-year-old thread, why? we'll never know, see step 3. 2) Someone goes off on a rant against random postings in the thread, including against an account that's been stale for two and a half years. 3) Original bump post gets deleted for rules violations. 4) Hilarity ensues.

I think my posting history makes it pretty clear where I stand on direct wealth redistribution and even I'll get in line to tell you this is a stupid analogy.

WOW, I bet the GOP has never used that trick. Politicians, pundits, etc. are all really bad about mixing and matching distributed and annual financial figures. Distributed actually makes more sense most of the time because legislation usually commits money over multiple years even though technically a budget still has to be put together every year. So even if you axe an $N billion program, that doesn't get you $N billion closer to an annual balanced budget. The problem is that people rarely, if ever, talk about total cumulative projected deficit over the same time period which is really what you need to see what kind of a dent you're making. This is a gross over-simplification. Not because it inaccurately describes what you don't like about the current situation, but because it hides better ways to fix the tax code without screwing over middle class people who make investments, and who keep more money out there in the economy because the preferential treatment this income receives at tax time. Not everyone who has to deal with capital gains taxes is an executive that light cigars with $100 bills. Short term capital gains and unqualified dividends are already taxed at the standard income rates. The problem isn't that the long-term rates are too low, it's that the definition of long-term investments and qualified dividends is incredibly lame and easy to abuse. If you fixed the definition to make revolving capital-gains-only income "scams" impractical you could scratch your itch without screwing up the works.

I fully appreciate how much effort and money it takes to get ratings and/or to fly camera, how much can be made for a weekend's work, how much on average is made for a weekend's work, and how much it can erode your freedom to do what you want with your weekends... ...and that's why I don't have any instructional ratings and I don't fly camera for the dropzone.

Let's discuss... Those two statements seem to conflict. I believe that it's much more likely to induce a control system mal if the brakes are set when pulling the slider past them. Pulling the slider past set brakes can, and has, released one toggle during the process whereas that can't happen if the brakes have already been released. Relative ease shouldn't fit into the equation, IMO. If your excess brake lines are well stowed and your risers are in good shape (I know, big "if") there's really nothing for the grommet to get caught on as you pull the slider down. I put my index and middle finger on either side of the lines above the grommets and gently rock them them back and forth as I pull down. The toggles don't even flinch and I can easily feel what's going on which allows me to keep my eyes moving around the sky. If I pop my brakes, now I have two tabs on the toggles (or a tab and a pin, or one tab that partially unfolds, depending on what make of risers we're talking about) that I have to re-stow or risk getting caught on the grommet as I try to get them through the slider, all the while I'm cruising around in full flight, unable to pay as much attention as I'd like to where I'm going. Which leads into another great point that I can't repeat enough... stow your damn excess brake lines people. If your risers don't have a dedicated place to stow your excess brake lines, add something with the help of a rigger or get new risers because yours are broken. Slink tabs, hats, bumpers, loops, your thumbs, etc. may all seem like they have their own purpose, but in reality they're all just doing one thing and that's waiting to get your unstowed excess brake line hitched around them. So, to re-phrase....(if the newbie collapses the slider) do a control check and then pull the slider down. That conflicts with your previous statement also. FWIW, I totally agree with the "they shouldn't bother pulling them down at all" part. All I was trying to say with this is, "don't read my post about not pulling the slider down after a control check and conclude that you should always pull it down before the control check, conclude that you should just leave the damn thing up there."