skiskyrock

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Everything posted by skiskyrock

  1. skiskyrock
    WA, CA, PA, FL, NC, NJ, MD, DC, VT, Connecticut... living there for two years, you'd think, but no; Canada, Mexico, England... Oh, and I was once boned hard by the Oregon State police.
  2. skiskyrock
    outstanding. If it wasn't for one of his reserve packjobs I wouldn't have made it to #35.
  3. skiskyrock
    If anything the vhf /uhf band would be more interesting since they are line of sight and you have quite a line of sight. HF?...not line of sight so on the ground in the sky who cares? On the otherhand you get points for combining the most/least adrenaline intensive hobbies known to man.
  4. skiskyrock
    The speed of light in not a constant, it varies depending on the refractive index of the material. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458m/s The lowest speed of light I've heard of is in a bose-einstein condensate: 38 mph.
  5. skiskyrock
    I ran into a guy form my FJC in Salt Lake City airport... and it turned out we were on the same flight. I suggested we dirt dive something in case the flight went horribly wrong.
  6. skiskyrock
    It has also been calculated that even a relatively simple protein couldn't fold into it's active conformation in the lifetime of the universe (Levinthal paradox), but they obviously do. So I wouldn't put too much faith in the trillions and trillions to one argument.
  7. skiskyrock
    We witness the passing of a great man. He has done more to promote virginity among teenage males than anyone else in the world.
  8. skiskyrock
    I keep seeing this study totally distorted by the media. The point isn't that antidepressants don't work, they do. It is just that the placebo effect for antidepressants is huge. That suggests to me that most people have the internal resources to deal with mild depression, if they are effectively mobilized. The person who is in one of these studies has probably spoken with a Dr., had someone ask them some baseline questions about how they are feeling, then cared about them enough to give them a sugar pill. They probably walk out of the office with an expectation that things are going to get better. You could probably get similar or better results with a few sessions of therapy, but who wants to pay for that? Here's a prescription. For severe depression, the placebo effect is much smaller, and there antidepressants save lives. For mild depression maybe there are better options. Disclaimer: this is my personal opinion, not that of my employer, who happens to make one of the drugs involved
  9. skiskyrock
    There are two types of HOA. Those that are written to be a PITA from the start, and those that become a PITA when interpreted by a fellow homeowner. It's not so much that I care that I used to have a contract that specified how far my wood pile had be from the building, but that I had a neighbor that actually took the time to measure. With NWFlyer as an exception, I don't think that the type of people who skydive are necessarily a good fit with an HOA.
  10. skiskyrock
    Cancer isn't a single diease. Even one specific type (say breast cancer) isn't a single disease, it is a symptom caused by one of a number of poorly understood underlying diseases. It could be caused by a genetic mutation that causes the cancer, a mutation that causes the cancer not to be supressed, or a virus that causes a cancer as a side effect of it's own life style. There are tests for some mutations that may cause you to get some types of cancer (BRCA genetic screening for breast cancer) or test that detect markers for a type of cancer that you have (PSA test for prostate cancer) but there isn't a single tet that you can do to detect cancer.
  11. skiskyrock
    Cell phones can cause equipmnent problems in the ER, but a 25000 volt electrical discharge is OK?
  12. skiskyrock
    The steroid hormones in birth control pills have endocrine disrupting/feminizing effects on fish exposed to waste water. Everybody is looking at this because we know about how many people are on the pill. Might be interesting to do a research project on the effects of abused steroids on things living downstream.
  13. skiskyrock
    Come on. The Renault Encore doesn't even make the list? It saves wear and tear on the radiator cap by blowing the heater core and venting steam and boiling water onto the drivers legs when it over heats. I haven't owned one for 17 years, but I still get letters from personal injury lawyers checking up on my health.
  14. skiskyrock
    I chose to be as samrt as I want, but when I got it , it just made me realize I should have taken the 8000 dollars
  15. skiskyrock
    On the rare occasions when I don't want to eat a whole pizza myself, I get ham and pineapple. If I want it all to myself, I get anchovies.
  16. skiskyrock
    one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. seriously, though, the whistle sounds like a damn good idea
  17. skiskyrock
    adblock is THE most important plug in for Firefox. I generally don't block anything from this site because, heck, I might actually want the product, but Adbrite is such a PITA on other sites it is on my adblock list.
  18. skiskyrock
    I've been using an apple airport extreme with a built in USB port to attach a USB hub. Right now I can access two printers and two drives over the network. I works seamlessly on the Mac, haven't tried the PC software yet. Great solution if your needs are basic.
  19. skiskyrock
    do NOT use tube stoes
  20. skiskyrock
    I'm really happy to see a lot of Washington folks checking in. Wish i was on that coast to lend a pair of eyes and boots.
  21. skiskyrock
    It all depends on what the local department is using. If you live in Mayberry, any scanner or a radio HT will work (ex bearcat 95, $ 150 or so). IF you live in an area that uses a trunked system to allow multiple agencies to use a smaller set of channels , you'll need trunk tracking scanner like the BCT-246T($250). If they use the APCO-25 digital system you'll need a scanner with digital capability (Bearcat 396T, $ 550). I'm not particularly endorsing bearcat, just happen to have the price list handy. Make sure it has a computer interface and alphanumeric tags, and for a skydiver, the ability to receive airbands is very helpful
  22. skiskyrock
    This question comes up constantly, and there is no good answer. Skydiving is a sport where inscrutable people take incalculable risks for incomprehensible rewards. Some die. Some get broke, some get bored. But here's the thing... the rewards are real. Waiting for a dock while sit flying at Richland and seeing the Columbia river valley spread out in front of me. Doing no-contact CRW at Snohomish above the clouds with only another skydiver and Mt Rainier for company. Waiting for the spot on my graduation dive while hanging onto the floater bars of the 207 with the wheat fields of Davenport rolling by miles below. Doing a water jump into the Susquehanna at Maytown. Cutting away over the Ranch and finding out that the reserve does work. Doing a horny gorilla over Lost Prarie. Golf probably has moments like these, I just haven't personally experienced them.
  23. skiskyrock
    My father used to own a TV repair business, and he had mirrors in the shop so he could watch what was happening to the picture while he made adjustments around the back of the TV. I was in my late teens and I was doing some work one day and didn't have a mirror handy, but I figured I could just watch from the front and reach around back and grab the BZZZT ZAPPPP flyback transformer BZZZT ZAPPPP. I regained conciousness about five minutes later sitting against the far wall of the shop.
  24. skiskyrock
    Maybe if you explained that it's named for it's behavior, not it's prey....
  25. skiskyrock
    Shoot... and I have to be 18 to jump.