jheadley

I know Dave Ramsey's philosophy is the most important thing is having a 1000 dollar emergency fund, then step two, pay off your debt. I believe step three is make a bigger emergency fund, one that you'd be able to live off of for a few months. Step 4, steal underpants. Step 5, ???? Step 6, Profit.

I don't necessarily disagree with you but definitely don't underestimate the value of hop-n-pops.

When I was looking for online savings accounts, I read a lot of horror stories about Emigrant Direct. Horrible customer service and extremely unreliable. It takes 2-3 weeks to even start your account. I went with ING Direct. The interest rate is not as high (I think it's around 4.5%), but it's very very easy to sign up for and very easy to use. You also can get a 25 sign up bonus.

It's amazing how much money you can save if you cut out all the crap, and keep a good budget. Instead of buying a soda, drink from the water fountain. Instead of getting takeout or eating out, just learn to cook for cheap. And don't drink any beer (NOOOOOO!!!!). Think about it, if you can save 2 dollars a day, basically pocket change, you'd have the money for a tandem in 3 months. I and my college friends have paid for hundreds of jumps like this. It's a very good deal, and it beats the hell out of any other job you could get on a weekend. This may be true, I worked at a dz near NYC where many of the skydivers were rich and made 20+ jumps a weekend. However I noticed the overall quality of their jumps was much worse than a more casual jumper, and their flying skill was pretty mediocre, and in some cases terrible. You can't put too much emphasis on # of jumps, it's quality. For some people, taking an extra 10 minutes to engineer a quality dive and practice it means that they will only be able to make 8 loads that day, instead of 10, and that's totally unacceptable, so they're rather just do hop and pops and zoo jumps

What's strange is when widescreen movies aren't cut, but actually compressed to full screen. 2010 : The Year We Make Contact was like it. It took me a while to figure out why everyone looked so skinny.

It depends on the movie. If it's something with a lot of wide angle shots and scenery, and special effects (Lord of the Rings, the Matrix, war movies, etc) I'd get wide screen. If it's just some stupid comedy, then I'd get full screen since it really doesn't matter if the edges of the picture are missing.

Why do the EZs get so many lineovers? The last dz I worked at that had those were getting lineovers usually every 50-80 jumps, but 3 out of 4 times they could be cleared. They even tried flat packing them for a while but were still getting lineovers.

Here's another cool violinist http://www.funnyjunk.com/movies/354/Darth+Vader+Playing+The+Violin/stream

Wait a minute, Ryan Turner is a real person? I thought he was just a skydiving myth? What kind of marker would one use to write on the pilot chute bridle? Any chance of the chemicals in the ink hurting the bridle?

What is psycho packing? Does that involve the help of jack nicholson? You know I think that name causes people to think you have to be crazy to pack that way. It does look a little crazy when you roll or fold things up to go in the bag upside down. I have really nice, on heading openings with it. There was a web site that showed you step by step how to Psycho pack on the internet. In fact, that's where I learned. I've heard that for at least one new canopy being manufactured they recommend Psycho-packing. If you really look at it, it isn't that much different than a pro-pack. I feel psycho packing makes it easier to get the air out and get it neatly into a small bag. If you can pack neatly another way, that's good also.....Steve1 Prescision Aerodynamics recommends it and even calls it the "precision pack". Here's the link for the video http://www.precision.aero/packing/mvc-002v.mpg Icarus also does recommend it for some of it's canopies, but not all. Also Beezy Shaw of HiPer USA recommends the psycho-pack to a lot of people (although the Nitro manual actually shows a PRO-pack?). Even PD says on it's website that while they recommend a PRO pack, they found that psycho "bagging" works well, and is ok to use. I've tried it a few times and like it. With the tail open you can really make sure no lines are near the nose, if any are, you can actually just take the lines and pull them back around. I typically don't use it because it actually makes the canopy pack so small that it fits too loosely in my bag and container. Also keeping tension on the lines is more difficult. You can see even in the video, on that last fold, some line tension was lost.

Anyone want to see who can do it the fastest? I got 3:13 Edit, 2:46.

hah, it took me a few minutes to figure out what you were saying, I got all 50 with everyone's help.

wow I just got the lady with kids, you're right, it is lame.

don't think too hard about that one I just have those last 3

the circle with the shovel is a clockwork orange what's the cigarette stick man and the juggling pennies? Write to me Stick Stickley P.O. Box 963 New York City New York State 10108

big baby is rosemary's baby, and the guys reading the map is the lost boys I can't get the m&m in the blue dress, the sheep, the pumpkin head guy, the wolves, and others mentioned

SPOILER The planets colliding is war of the worlds. SPOILER

Hi Kelpdiver. Turns out my lines were Dacron - so back to the drawingboard ... Ross Well you should be glad they were. The opening would have been even worse if they weren't!

I remember seeing on here maybe a year or so ago about another politician who had a campaign ad on TV of him skydiving. It was the same thing, him in freefall, with the tandem master digitally cut out, except it was actually a video clip, maybe 5 seconds long. Is that the same guy? Anyone remember what I'm talking about?

I bet SkyMonkeyONE has videos of him swooping his Sabre 2.

Pull priorities, in order of importance 1. Pull (most important) 2. Pull at the correct altitude 3. Pull while stable (least important) Deploying your reserve quickly after a cutaway is extremely important, even most of the anti-RSL people agree with that. People have died waiting too long to get stable before pulling their reserve after a cutaway.

Do you think the weight of the PC handle would have any effect on the frequency of it happening? I can sort of see how a heavier handle may make it happen more often.

Last year from 1/1/05 to 9/4/05 I made 171 jumps as a college student only coming out on weekends. This year from 1/1/06 to 9/4/06 I made 176 jumps, living and working on a dz for most of that time. I got a job as a packer at a full time dz thinking I'd get to jump a lot. Boy was I wrong. I probably could have made more jumps (and more money) working at McDonalds Monday through Friday and only jumping on weekends. Still, it was a good experience.

clicky picture of a possible exit There are no stars in the background, it's fake!

If you're really gunshy about jumping again because of hard openings, once you get your own gear, you can get canopies that are known to open very very soft. A Spectre, for one opens very soft. A Pilot, also. Also getting thick dacron lines will also slow down the opening, and, if you do get a hard opening, the lines will stretch, absorbing much of the shock. I've had a few openings that were semi-uncomfortable, but honestly the last "hard" opening I had was about 400 jumps ago. Good packing, good body position, correct airspeed at deployment, and a good choice of main canopy almost eliminates the problem completely.