peacefuljeffrey

Hi Gil, and welcome. I guess I would heartily recommend you come out to Skydive SoBe (the DZ located at the SE shore of Lake Okeechobee). The people there are friendly and experienced, and the view over the lake is really cool, and the dropzone itself is broad (which makes landings easier when you have a big field to touch down in). Check out Skydive SoBe I don't work there, but I'm a regular and I really love the place. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Never seen someone "jazzed" to start a job where he knows he will see people severely injured and possibly dead... but... I guess the theory is,"They're going to get that way anyway, I'm jazzed about the potential to save their lives." Good luck, do some good.

That's precisely why the bill has had such widespread support. I don't remember the name of the group, but some manufacturers' organization threw themselves behind it. It is sure that manufacturers of things other than guns recognized that if the absurd legal theory of manufacturer accountability for illegal misuse of a product were allowed to gain ground, car makers, toaster makers, liquor makers, axe makers, weedwhacker makers... all would be subject to frivolous lawsuits like those aimed at the gun industry. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Couldn't this also prevent lawsuits against manufactures that make say a cheap weapons with large capacity that end up being used to take out a small portion of a former employer? I know that sounds very harsh, but I couldn't find another way to put it. Please don't flame me for it. Why would that be the fault of the manufacturer? That's the MURDERER'S fault, or do you believe otherwise? If you can agree with suing the legal maker of a legal product, who sells it legally to someone who may legally possess it, for something that buyer later does which is against the law... ...why not support suing automobile makers for the killings of innocent people when their cars are abused by drunk drivers? The legal theory is THE SAME. Oh, but you say that the gun was "cheap" and had a "large capacity"? You mean only those guns that are expensive should be available for murder? Do you mean that the large capacity made it inordinately dangerous -- so much more dangerous when a gun has, say, a 13-round magazine as opposed to a 10-round one? What if we turned that toward the car industry, and said that the 5,500 pound SUV that the drunk drove into the Hyundai with the family of four in it was inordinately heavy and powerful? I hope you can begin, with our help here, to see the fallacy of the position you argued. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, let me be frank. In today's paper I see an article about a lawyer who wants to take the case of Nathaniel Brazill, who several years ago murdered his teacher in cold blood in a classroom in Lake Worth, Florida. (Local news here in West Palm Beach.) He was convicted. One of the youngest murder convicts ever in Florida. He had been 13 when he shot the teacher in the face in front of his class. The kid had been sent home on the last day of school because he had been disruptive. He went home, stole a handgun from his grandfather or some dude who lived with his family, brought it back to school. He went to a classroom of one of his "favorite teachers," Barry Grunow, and asked to speak with a girl he liked. He was denied, so he stuck the gun in the teacher's face, racked the slide, and eventually fired. Now there is this piece of shit LAWYER, Jack Thompson, who wants to champion the young murderer. According to the article in The Palm Beach Post, 2/26/04, Thompson "emerged from a 2.5 hour meeting with Nathaniel Brazill on Wednesday, calling the 17-year-old a 'fine young man' who was wrongfully convicted of murdering Lake Worth Middle School teacher Barry Grunow." "A FINE YOUNG MAN"?! HE SHOT AN INNOCENT MAN IN THE FACE! How fuckin' low are this lawyer's standards for what makes someone a "fine young man" if he can say that about a convicted murderer who stole a gun and shot someone in the face?! Oh, yeah, that's right. He's a lawyer. He hangs around other lawyers. That's how. THIS is what makes us hate lawyers, dude. Their willingness to TELL US BLATANT LIES RIGHT TO OUR FACES. Their absolute lack of ethics when they try to convince us that bullshit is chocolate, and we should all take a bite. Or how about the lying scumbag laywers who went to Mr. Grunow's widow and coaxed her into suing the manufacturer and distributor of the gun -- as well as the county school board. The novel theory was that a gun that fired when its trigger was deliberately pulled was somehow "defective" because it did not have some presently-unperfected device capable of preventing it from being fired by a "child." Sue the school board? WHY? What did they do wrong? They didn't throw themselves in front of the bullet? How can anyone foresee a kid coming in with a handgun to commit murder? Of the dozens of lawsuits being brought against the gun industry, NOT ONE has yet collected damages. They keep getting thrown out of court after court, since there is NO LEGAL MERIT to the notion of suing the legal manufacturers and sellers of a legal product that functioned exactly as designed. In this Brazill case, the jury found the gun company only FIVE PERCENT culpable for a several-million dollar award. Then that jury verdict was overturned by the trial judge who said the law does not consider the gun defective if it fired as designed. (Score one for rationality.) So even though these bullshit legal gambits have been laughed out of court dozens of times, there are still dozens of such cases pending. That means the lawyers involved are either ignorant of the case law that says their claims have no chance of being given credence, or they are incompetent at formulating legal strategies, or they are deliberately abusing the tort system to attempt to bankrupt a legal industry v ia the "death by a thousand cuts." (This has been admitted by Denis Henigan of Handgun Control Inc., by the way. That's his strategy.) So when there is a failed legal strategy (I call it a FRAUD) that continues to be attempted, even though it is utterly without merit and has failed numerous times, with judges excoriating the perpetrators of it for being irresponsible in their tort, I say that LAWYERS are complicit in an unethical, fraudulent attack on gun makers. Meanwhile, their efforts to displace blame result in a climate in which everyone but the actual shooter is accused of responsibility for the crime of murder. You want to know why I hate lawyers? It's lawyers who come up with these reprehensible strategies to steal money from one pocket to another. And they look at you with a straight face and say that they actually believe their own lies. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I didn't realize there were people out there who would do something as scummy as misrepresent whether they had actually had the CYPRES serviced as scheduled! How friggin' LOW. Is it possible that they were confused between battery replacement and "servicing"? What's the excuse? Man, it makes me glad that my rig was outfitted with a new CYPRES 2, and that the battery isn't due for its first check for FOUR YEARS!!!

Ummm... We're getting a helicopter at SoBe? Why didn't anyone tell me this? Angela, When I was in 11th grade, I was in AP Physics. I struggled HARD. Many of my friends seemed to be having a much easier time of it than I was. I kept falling behind in my understanding of the lessons, and then in the homework. I even got paid tutoring from one of the other physics teachers after school! I got depressed about it. What I had to do was learn to separate the grades I got from the person I was. I was still the same good person whether I got a C or an A, and even whether I understood refraction or diffraction or acceleration or gravitation... I had to force myself to realize that my life was still my life, my loves were still my loves, my family was still my family -- regardless of whether I was learning stuff quickly, slowly, or not learning it at all. So if you're having trouble with school, just remember that school-learning does not make you who you are. Being who you are makes you that. And another thing: If you're worried or wondering whether you'll make a good engineer, you have to realize that there are LOTS of people in LOTS of positions in the world who aren't even good at what they're supposed to be doing professionally! I know many people like that! The important thing is that you must remember, one is not expected to know every single thing BEFORE one takes a position or job. In my office, we train people (actually I) train people) to use the software we use, for two weeks, and then they start the job, and then they start learning how to do it! I sometimes feel the same way you do, about being a pilot. I recognize that although I can take off, fly, navigate and land an airplane, I don't know nearly everything there is to know about doing it, or even everything I could know. But I'm open to continued learning, and I enjoy continued learning, and continued learning keeps happening the longer I stay at it. In the meantime, all you can do is hang in there while you get better and better. It's good to hear that your ankle is feeling chipper. That's one less thing to worry about!

You know why Mardi Gras can blow me? Because GOLD COAST SKYDIVERS has our Super Otter, and we have their Super SLOW Otter (for the time being...)! SoBe skydivers want their plane back, PRONTO! -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

See, I'm confused, 'cause even though I know Angela has an ankle injury that she's trying to make better, whenever I see her at SoBe she seems cheerful enough... What's up with the big sigh and doldrums? Come out on Sunday and jump jump jump (with an ankle brace if necessary) and it'll start lookin' better! -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

NO! Criminals: Felons, murderers, and such do not. It it a right to be able to be married? I have never seen that in the bill of rights. Our rights are not enumerated. Those in the Bill of Rights are singled out for protection, and the rest that are not listed are presumed to belong to the states and to the people, respectively. Your thinking is backward. The government has very limited power -- only that which is apportioned to it by the Constitution. What this means is that: 1) If you don't see it in the Constitution, that doesn't mean the people can't do it. 2) If you don't see it in the Constitution, that DOES mean that the government CAN'T do it. Of course, they have already just about flushed this very true fact right down the toilet. Technically, there's no basis for the FCC or the FAA to have any authority whatsoever! -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's exactly what I've been thinking. I mean, you know that a person like the President doesn't say or do shit without it being scripted and reviewed and approved by those who are in his cadre... So you have to figure that THIS passed muster when they were deciding on something that should be said in front of the entire fuckin' WORLD! I believe there is ultimate truth in the statement, "The people who WANT to hold political power are EXACTLY the ones we should PREVENT from holding political power." Why is it that these fuckin' holy-roller religious idiots keep insisting that it is THEIR country to shape and mold? What is it about gay marriage (two people who happen to be of the same sex, wanting to commit to each other for life, rather than fuck around promiscuously which is exactly what religious people dislike about "them gay folk"!) that the find threatening? What is it about gays being allowed to marry that would somehow ruin THEIR ability to be married?! It's not like once gays can marry, heteros will not be able to continue doing what they've been doing all this time. Man, our leadership is truly fucked up. Let's watch what Kerry does with this, though. If he's true to form, he'll lambaste Bush for his position, but then vote in favor of the amendment. He doesn't seem able to do ANYTHING without contradicting himself later. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's not a link, that's a URL. Click "Get Markup Help" to find out how to make a clicky out of it. Just tryin' ta be helpful... -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

"Sir, you can't park your truck here, this is a fire zo... OH! I'm terribly sorry, ma'am... sir..." ---Jeffrey

When I was in college, one of our buddies used to say that he was going to have a DJ play Led Zeppelin's "Thank You" when he got married. I don't know if he did, but my best friend got married and I made sure to have the DJ play it. It's a great love song. "If the sun refused to shine I would still be lovin' you When mountains crumble to the sea there will still be you and me..." -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I'm not crazy about flying in a plane not piloted by me... DZ planes excepted. I trust them because the pilot's a skydiver in a lot of cases, and at SoBe, Ron the owner often flies right seat. (Vested interest in the flight succeeding, etc.) So I was on a flight to Utah in May 2003, with people from work, on a work-related trip. We had a connection in Houston, which was socked in with the worst fog I've ever seen. That and rain. And thunderstorms. (Read: CONVECTION) Well, the landing went fine, and we had a layover. When we were on the connecting flight out from Houston to Salt Lake City, we were climbing out and were probably in the teens or so of altitude when we started hitting SCARY severe turbulence. Now, I'm a private pilot and a motion-junkie, so I normally like a bit of whoopsie-daisy -- but not this. I was pretty blanched. It was like two giants had each grabbed a wingtip and were snapping them up and down repeatedly. Harder and harder, until one final one that pretty much had everyone on the plane yelping and looking around at each other with wide eyes. I'm normally calm in turbulence, but as I said, this was beyond what I was used to, amused by, or comfortable with. Well, moments after that last HUGE jolt (pressed-into-your-seatbelt, arms-and-legs-in-the-air force), we saw several flight attendants rushing toward the back of the plane. I was half-expecting them to be fighting some electrical fire or something due to a stress fracture in the airframe. But nope. What had happened was there was an attendant in the tail area and she and a big heavy cart had gone up into the air, and the cart had come back down on her and smashed her pelvis, so that one leg was dislocated (according to someone i knew who was in the rear and had seen or heard what had happened.) Our t.v. screens were showing the plane's progress across the country depicted as a graphic, and soon I saw we were veering a bit. Nothing was said to us for a good twenty minutes, and then the captain told us that we were diverting to Dallas, and the flight attendant was med-evaced off the rear exit of the plane. We were fueled and reinspected, and in that same scary plane we made it safely to Salt Lake City. Two weeks later, we were in SLC waiting in the gate when we spoke with a man who had heard about a flight where they hit severe turbulence and someone got hurt! I don't know how he heard about it (it don't think it made the papers but maybe it did), but we were like, "That was our flight!!" Now, I avoid flying as much as I can, even to the point of driving from FL to NY -- but the reason is not fear of flying, it's disgust, anger, frustration and contempt for the prick-fuck-bastards doing the so-called "security." The TSA should rot in hell. Bunch of fuckin' fascist useless shitwads. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Well, DAMN... I'm surprised anyone would let an animal anywhere near their canopy -- not for fear of pissing, but for fear of CLAWS SCRATCHING AND TEARING THE MATERIAL! That'd be my first concern, and then piss. -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Play-Dough ... Childhood Certain Magic Marker Pens ... Shrinky-Dinks Patchouilly ... College Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips ... Feet Napalm in the Morning ... Victory!! -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Just ordered a Cypres 2 today, should get it tomorrow, that will finish off my rig which I should be able to jump for the first time this weekend. I also aquired permission to skip work Friday if the weather is good to get in some canopy control jumps at the dropzone. Told my boss I needed the day off to train on a downsized canopy before jumping my own rig. It's a safety thing ya know Come onnn, be a man and call in SICK, like I do! What's this "permission" shit?! Didn't know you had yourself a rig, Mark. That's way cool! Enjoy it! -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yeah yeah, I see you stylin' out there at SoBe, Angela. Rock on!

...and gosh, maybe even his home state!!!

That's right, SoBe in Florida.

Dude, you fly that?! AWESOME! Airplane looks sweet! -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I shoulda known I could count on you to be a fan, Kennedy.

OMG is it gonna be funny watching the Dems rip each other apart for another four years when Nader splits the vote again and GW takes oath once more... It'll be like that old Tom and Jerry cartoon where the two cats squabble over a female cat and then she ends up hooking up with Jerry! (or something like that. My memory of it is hazy. I still remember the one where the Devil was gonna take Tom unless he could get Jerry to sign a forgiveness waiver! Classic! Uh oh, did I lose my train of thought?) -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I used to write him off because he couldn't act for shit. And then I saw a bit of his standup on HBO or something and thought him unfunny. But then I started to listen to some comedy channel on iTunes at work and found out he is funny as hell! Also, sometimes the iTunes comedy station plays bits from his comedy albums, not just his stand-up stuff. It reminds me a lot of Adam Sandler's albums. The funniest is one where he plays a guy calling up his girlfriend for phone sex and she's just not enthusiastic about it... -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"