peregrinerose

I have to emphatically disagree on the recommendation of tandems.... when you land on a tandem, you usually butt slide, so students who do a lot of tandems before AFF try to do the same kind of landing, as that's their instinct. Trying to butt land is the most common way I've seen students get hurt on landing... broken backs when you flare too high or too low or too fast or too slow and try to land on your ass are horrible, ugly, take a very long time to heal (and most importantly, scare the living crap out of your instructor!!) PLFs prevent injury, prevent twisted ankles, prevent stressing weaker joints. Taking 10 jumps to 'perfect' stand up landings is utter horse shit. It took me 50 jumps to stand up consistently, and even now at pushing 800 jumps, I still have an occasional off-foot landing for various reasons (I'm smart enough to not even try to stand up a landing in a soy field, or freshly plowed field, for example). It doesn't matter if you have 1 or 10,000 jumps, you will fuck up a landing at some point, PLFs will save your ass... lots of tandems and a habit of butt sliding will get you hurt. The knee/ankle support suggestion is a very good one though... just make sure it's something soft and easily worn under a jump suit so it doesn't become a snag factor. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

I've never heard of anyone 'gagging' to do AFF before. I'm glad I won't be your instructor... getting puked on isn't my thing Part of your training is how to do a PLF (parachute landing fall) which is designed to distribute impact of a less than ideal landing or landing situation (trees, corn, water, etc) over your entire body to help minimize damage done. I'd recommend being a darn good PLFer (but then again, every student should be that!). A good stand up landing does not require you to be a fast runner... I certainly am no sprinter and do just fine, with practice and training, you will too. Your doctor has approved of jumping, so as long as you make the DZ staff aware of your situation and past injuries so they can train you accordingly... go have fun. One of my AFF students last year was run over by a car, literally. Destroyed his pelvis, femur, lots of guts. He had some issues being a little lopsided in freefall which caused him to turn, but he fixed the problem and did great. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Flag the sale as a fraud on ebay, you can do that. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Scout To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book ever. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

One of the more dangerous parts of skydiving is not knowing what you don't know. Your rule of thumb, 'if you have to ask, you aren't ready' isn't a very good one. Every time you try something new... ASK. Get good information on how to go about doing something safely and learning from past mistakes instead of trying to re-write history and learn from mistakes you end up making. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Are you crazy? Steelers are wonderful! I bleed Black and Gold blood. Really! My tied-for-second-favorite-teams happen to be whoever is playing the Cowboys and whoever is playing New England, followed closely by whoever is playing the Eagles. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

You ALWAYS need to have your head on a swivel. No exceptions. Someone may have had a premature deployment and thus be in the sky at the same time as you even though they left the plane long before you. You share the sky with more than just other canopies, there are planes up there too (do a search for the Gus Wing incident a few years ago). Ultralights and gliders have been known to fly into skydiver airspace on landing. Complacency will eventually bite you in the ass, and your comment is blatant complacency. Take air traffic a lot more seriously. I hope you learned a lot from this thread, and hope you'll put camera work on hold for another 100+ jumps. Be patient, grasshopper... it's not a rip on you, you just need a little more seasoning and experience

Unfortunately, not all DZs have a culture that adheres to that. I jumped at a boogie at another DZ with a guy from a third DZ, brand new A license and camera helmet. I questioned it, since I was working with low time jumpers at the boogie, including him, and he said he had the endorsement of his instructor (who was there and verified it). He had about 35 jumps at the time Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Congrats!

Nope, once a lens is scratched you can't do anything about it without changing the Rx or making the lens unsafely thin in buffing it out. That's the problem with Poly, because it's a liquid, it is very very soft and scratches more easily than other materials, even with the scratch coats. How old is the lens? Our practice policy is one replacement of lenses and frames within 2 years.... even if you run it over with the car, as long as you bring us pieces, we'll replace once in that time. I'd check with the place you got the glasses, it may still be under warranty and replaced at no charge. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

I do have one pair in poly for the gun range too

What are the advantages/disadvantages of one over the other, in your professional opinion? I only have astigmatism, right eye .75 and left eye .5 - no near/far-sightedness corrections. I'm planning on contacts once the left eye hits .75 but will still need reading glasses (dammit). You'd be nuts to do surgery with that kind of Rx... no ethical surgeon would touch you... that kind of refraction is pretty common AFTER surgery

The drawback with polycarb in prescriptions above about +/- 3 is that optically they are horrible. Poly is technically a liquid, which is why it doesn't shatter. However, because it is technically a liquid, it's optical properties are horrid. Keep your head straight and look far left/right. If you look at a light source, you can see it break up into rainbows... a little reddish on one side a little greenish on the other. That's chromatic aberration and very common with polycarb. You'll also notice that straight edges warp and distort. Night vision tends to not be as good. It's great for safety, sucks for everything else. A 1.67 or 1.74 high index plastic costs more on the surface, but it also comes with a very high quality antireflective and scratch coat (which you have to pay about $100 extra for on Poly), it is optically much better, and quite a bit thinner, so you get a lot more for your money. There's no reason not to have 2 pairs of glasses... one Poly for sports (use an older Rx or older frame), and use the newer frame that the insurance covers for a nice pair of high index lenses. Yes, you'll pay more, but you'll also SEE more. If you're nearsighted, the smaller the lens size you get, the thinner the lenses will be too, so keep that in mind. Yes, you may pay, even with insurance $150 or so for high index (depends on your insurance), but that's 7 jump tickets, 7 dinners out to eat, 1 visit to a hair dresser or a host of other things that are fairly easy to stagger a little more and prioritize. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Why? I had lasik in 1996, was jumping with a frap hat & goggles 5 days later. 12 years later & I've noticed no ill effects yet

Heh... I don't pay a dime for my glasses, but there's no reason to not have a pair. If someone can afford contacts, they need to own a pair of back up glasses. If money's an issue.... glasses come first. It's not possible to screw up one's eye health with glasses. I've never turned a patient away based on need, and have a pretty good network of funding sources for my patients... primarily local lions' clubs. Anyone in need only has to ask, there are a LOT of resources that will pay for glasses. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Not to mention the obvious, but both itchy dirty contacts and ancient back up glasses are your own damn fault. I have clean contacts every day (wear one days) and 15 pairs of back up glasses... they can be fun. Plus, when I'm 40 and looking under my glasses and reading just fine, and all of you post LASIK-ers are starting to pick up reading glasses to see up close, I'll be the one snickering

Good luck!! Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Yep, I'm right there with you on that one. I love those books, have read the series, probably 4 times now. They are far more political intregue, action, drama, than fantasy.... it just happens to be set in a fantasy realm. Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

If you have so little faith in your collegues snoopiness with regard to your chart, why not take your medical care elsewhere? Why work with people that you don't trust 100%? If you can't trust them completely, how do you expect your patients to give their trust to them? Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

I'm an eye doc, so very rarely go into hospitals. When I do, I use a laptop :-) Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

At our office, the patients fill out paper history forms which are then scanned into the computer, just to avoid problems like you are having... every year they just look over it and initial/date with any changes. I can pull it up in the exam room and see it with no problem. Funny you asked about ob/gyn and EMR... I was at mine last week and they had just switched to EMR. She carried in a lap top, had it on a stand in the exam room, so she was facing me the whole time, making eye contact, not typing. She asked all her questions, then during the small talk component, she entered it in the computer. At a GI specialist I went to a few weeks ago, he had a tech in the room, so he was talking with me the entire time, stated his findings out loud, and the tech entered it during the exam. I actually liked that system too, as his hands were free the whole time, and I got to hear all of his findings as he was finding them. Both systems worked pretty well at least from a patient perspective. However I was at an ER a while ago, and they were having problems with one of the work stations letting them log in. It was entertaining to watch, but probably very frustrating for them. I'm lucky that from an eye care stand point, EMRs have been around for probably 7 or 8 years, so a lot of bugs have gotten worked out. The program we used was designed by an optometrist, so very conducive to the exam room. Our entire exam room is computerized, so things like retinal photos, refractions, visual fields, etc., are automatically transferred from the equipment to the EMR. Buttons are fun

I have to disagree about EMR taking more time an invading privacy. I've been using it for 5 or so years. The office I am at now has been totally paperless for over a year. I don't even have a pen in the exam room any more. My typing is much faster than my writing, not to mention more legible, and every exam room has a lap top. So the time I spent writing during the exam is now spent typing, which takes me less time. Letters to other docs take less time as the program automatically writes them for me, I just go in and delete the extraneous information (cardiologists, for example, don't give a damn what the glasses script is, so I get rid of that info) and hit print. If a patient needs their chart transferred, it's just a matter of hitting 'print' instead of copying illegible paper records. I can get an opinion from a surgeon by emailing a photo. Prescriptions are printed out so legible and pharmacists love that, plus there's no chance of someone stealing my Rx pad and writing scripts for narcotics on it (this happened to a friend of mine!). Things that change with time... blood sugars, intraocular pressures, cup/disk ratios are automatically put on graphs with the EMR, so very easy for me to pull up and show patients how things are changing with time. From a patient privacy standpoint... there is no difference between me picking up the patient's paper chart and me looking up the EMR chart on the computer... either way two docs from the same office can still access the data easily, and that is what's in the patient's best interests from a continuity of care stance, and privacy is no different than it was before... it's just easier for different docs to pull up the information. Do patients lie? Of course they do, but I doubt that this will change from EMR vs. paper charts. I see no difference in privacy from EMR vs. paper charts. It's not like random Joe can pull up an EMR. Everything is encrypted, password protected, not easy to get to (paper charts were actually much less secure than the EMR version). Jen Do or do not, there is no try -Yoda

Thank you for a nice boogie, we had a great time jumping on Friday!!! Hope you do it again next year

A hell of a lot of gratitude, I hope.

I know he saved my husband once, and I'm soooooo glad. I kinda like my dirty hippie husband.