tdog

That is what you deserve for bragging to me about your work related skiing adventures... That is why I won't brag to you about my tunnel time this morning in Orlando...

But even that doesn't give you much more protection, esp in an at-will employment state. Unless the contract spells out guarantees. Depends on if the employment is as a 1099 independent contractor - or as a W2 employee... I can sign a contract with a contractor that says they must work for me, and I must pay them - and breach of either will be seen in a specific jurisdiction of law and have specific financial costs. With an employee - things are much different, as you point out, in a non-binding relationship.... Every AFFI/Tandem instructor I know works on a 1099 independent contractor relationship, however I don't know that many really.... How many pilots work as W2 employees or independent contractors???

My coach after Christmas suggested I slim down a bit... This caused me to hire a personal trainer and go to the gym 3X a week. So, skydiving is the end goal, not the tool for this... It went something like this: "Look, you are 6'3 with long arms an legs. You have the surface area of a world champion - you just need to trim down." At 205 pounds, I am not even that big - but Craig Girard is a toothpick next to me... I know that holding rears for a few minutes on a long spot works out my upper body. I know flying a hour a day in the tunnel works my core strength - I feel it all over, not in one muscle group. I know flying works out balance and reaction times. That is me...

I had some of the same questions as you - especially about the skyhook... Not that Bill Booth is god, but he did invent it - so I asked him in a skydivingradio.com interview... Perhaps you could download that as part of your education.

Sounds like you need some good coaching/instruction with some video so you can see what is going on. I have had bad days before in skydiving myself... It is bad when you think, "I really don't want to jump today." To me, a fast uncontrollable spin is an emergency... You can lose consciousness or altitude awareness... Different instruction programs teach that if you lose stability to pull after X seconds... I would seriously talk to your instructors... Waiting till a magical 4.5K may not be advised if you cannot be stable. I know a lot of DZs have the "don't pull above a certain altitude" rule... I am counting on horizontal separation myself. If I lose stability, which could come from a broken arm, or being light headed from a hit or something, I am going to clear my airspace and pull, wherever I am at. If you alti was blurry, you might have been on the edge of something worse... I don't think I would have ridden it out until 4.5K myself, especially if the spin was getting worse, not better. I would say that if you can't skydive stable at this point, you probably need to go back to your instructors and ask for help. And, don't feel bad, there are many, many, many people who had a hard time "getting it" - and soon as they did, they became awesome instructors. If you need motivation, download the Halo - Freefall warriors show off of skydivingmovies.com - the guy who spins and fails the course - a year later, is a top instructor... Some times it just "clicks".

... Alan, And here I am working in ballroom and I can see Skyventure Orlando across the street (and I don't know if I will have any time off) - and my heart is going pitter-patter knowing a tunnel is so close, and my wingsuit is so far away... It just seems like evil torture right now... I can't fly either! But at least the balance (due to actually getting paid to be here) in my bank account is filling up! I think I have a wuffo work-mate who wants to fly, so maybe I will hit up the tunnel... But, we did have fun, didn't we...

Yep... A few people reminded me of that when I forgot to change it... I never thought about it until it happened because I had low expectations of actually slowing down that much... Pleasant surprise...

Still no in air photos... Yet... I am a complete novice when it comes to wingsuit flying, I will admit that... I am lucky that so many experienced people are giving us coaching.... I have flown the prodigy before, but this is the first "true" wingsuit I have flown. I got in four jumps today... Three solos and a two way flock... I thought the day started good when my speeds were in the 70s- remembering this was the first jump on the suit and I spent most of the dive touching handles, getting used to the suit with wings collapsed, etc... The second jump was in the low sixties.... Again, very dirty flying, but this time I was paying more attention to the lift created by the wings. The third jump, at 10K I remember hitting the sweet spot and feeling this incredible lift... I only wish I knew what I got it down to, but my protrack thought I pulled at 10K and showed zero speed. The protrack did give me enough info to calculate that I was in the low sixties before it thought I pulled... So I estimate I entered the mid to low 50's as the change in wind noise, the sudden lift, and everything else told me I was getting major lift and slowing down a lot. The fourth jump, I was back in the 60's, trying to feel what different things felt like and flying a very predictable way as we were flying together... So, I am no expert, but knowing where I am at now in 4 jumps on this suit, I am expecting great things as I learn how to actually fly it! Right now it is flying me, and making me look good... Now I need to learn how to show it who is boss... Wow... I really think the suit is great. T.

Geezzzz... The box came after sundown... And I post a photo in ten minutes after opening... And you want in air photos already.... I guess that means I have to wake up and go to the DZ, huh... The third member of Avian Flew opted to go snowboarding today because he had a free condo with beautiful woman (or so I can hope for him) in the mountains today... So there will be only two of us flying today... But, I can see the next few months being pretty fun as we learn to dial it in as a group!

Me thinks... No matter how hard you work on "retraining" the student, he or she is going to "land" in their neutral position they learned in the tunnel once they enter the air, especially if they have hours in the tunnel... I know I learned mantis on the mat outside the tunnel, and when I went in the tunnel I first "hit" the familiar boxman... It took a little time to get used to it and transition to something else. So I imagine the opposite would be true... Take a fish who knows how to swim one way - tell him to do it another way, and he probably won't, at least at first.

There is a new flock in town... See attached. Box just came today... The suits are airing their wings, getting ready to fly... It is like Christmas morning and Santa just came... But much better. And more grown up too.

Tell that to Google... They built their systems on "do-it-yourself servers"... Tell that to the hundreds (albeit not thousands) of employees at my company that would not get a paycheck if the SQL server went down on payday - and would lose all their business e-mail to customers - and would lose the ability to track millions of dollars in bills... But we digress, this thread is about powerful desktops, not servers... Even if I liked HP products at the server level, I would warn anyone from getting them at the consumer level. I have a friend who's company manages the computer networks at 35 large doctor's offices. Each office would not be able to see patients if their network went down. And, if the data was lost, medical records would be gone, and HIPPA requires secure systems. He switched to Dell from other brands for servers and poweruser desktops - and has had great luck - even for Dell products as Citrix terminal servers - with just Wyse dumb terminals at the desktop. He shares the same opinion as I do about the consumer and low to mid range HP products. Brand loyalty is a great thing. I am glad you are HP loyal... I am not, unless it is a network switch or printer. So, I would say your comment that my experience is the exception might be a little too accusitory.

Which one did you get? Dell Inspiron 9300. I searched "Dell Coupons" on google and got a coupon code that knocked $1500 off the price, so I got a $3000+ model for about $1600 including shipping...

My Dell laptop has been rock solid... Our Dell desktops at work have been rock solid... They worked without a single hardware failure until their processor speed became functionally obsolete. The HP and Compaq machines I have purchased have sucked. I set my Dad up with a Compaq for his office... All sorts of hardware problems... My parents HP was so full of crap that HP put on it, that it finally needed to have the OS reinstalled. I looked for the software disks and found a class action lawsuit had been filed because HP did not send the disks... 1 year later I got my disks in the settlement offer, after I had to buy a new licence of XP because the HP OEM serial number would not activate on the retail version disks I had... It was cheaper for me to build my own servers, but when it comes time to getting a desktop or laptop - I go with Dell... Granted, I don't buy their cheapest model, but their cheapest model is designed for the MS Office user - not a power user... Oh, my Dell desktop at my office, which runs everything from Photoshop to AutoCAD to Visual Studio 2005, with dual head 21 inch monitors - has been rock solid since March of 2000 also. Still on it's first install of OS. It was a $2000 model, and all I have done since is install a few more gigs of ram and a DVD burner... Visual Studio 2005 is making it show it's age - but then again, most people are complaining about VS2005 being a bust in terms of performance... So, I agree that Dell is not perfect, but much better than the other "big name guys" in my opinion...

I came home one day to my music server (yes I am a geek too) being turned on and off again, every 5 seconds, by the APC UPS... The very battery/power conditioner designed to SAVE the computer - KILLED it... The music was stored redundantly - but the OS was trashed and I opted to replace the hard drives - after they had thousands of power downs in one day... I feel your pain man. Geeks unite. Well, sort of... P.S. If I told you one of my windows servers running our office voicemail has 1.5 years of uptime - you probably would feel even worse, huh - and the music server at my office is going on 2 years running windows... Sorry to rub it in.

When i first got mine done, i had a couple openings that let me know they were there. No problems since. I do have a friend however that we call "Gimple" cause he had one ripped out. Ouch... I joked that if I got a nipple piercing, I would grab a roll of gaff tape and tape it down... That is why.

How does a nipple ring "work" with skydiving harnesses? I guess the thought of the main lift webs being so close to it scares me.

Now I was in the tunnel at Perris almost a year ago, and it was raining outside enough that it was raining up in the tunnel. I learned why they have a washer and drier... But, I digress... I wonder how rain drops are shaped when they are being sucked up onto you??? he he he he Do you think they just invert? I am glad you mythbustered the pointy thing, because I was about ready to... One of the many useless things I have learned on this website.

http://www.skydiving-galleries.com/pages/Default.aspx

No, they don't have any editing... Two of them are terminal servers. One of them has 25+ users at any given time running outlook, word, porn sites, etc... Since it is a terminal server, it is running all the software for all the users, and the users are just logging in from "dumb terminals" from their seats... So, imagine your desktop running 25 simultaneous users... It gets quite a load. The gigs of ram and shared dlls actually make the terminal server experience much faster than the desktops employees used to have, but I digress. My point was that the hardware is extremely reliable... If I added a firewire card and video editing software, any one of them would be a kick ass machine. Video editing machines need lots of fast hard drive space, fast processors for compressing files, etc... My next desktop will be a supermicro I will make... Something like a http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/4U/7044/SYS-7044H-X8R.cfm?PID=TWR.... But the funny thing is - I am now editing video on my laptop, and having great results... I have an external firewire hard drive in case my 80 gigs on my laptop is not enough... The DVD burner means I can even make DVDs in the waiting area of the tunnel for teammates, like I did last time I was at Eloy...

You say three were tandems??? I remember the tandem (this was seven years ago) being painful. Sport rigs are more comfortable... I personally liked the student Mirage gear, but hated the student Javelin gear... But others are the opposite. Proving that sometimes different rigs fit people differently/better. I never have had sore legs on my Vector, except for one opening that was so hard it hurt many parts of my body... So, try a few different rigs, and don't think a tandem rig feels anything like a sport rig...

I have built all our company servers using the SuperMicro rackmount server products. The chassis and the motherboard come as a package. Just add processors, hard drives, and ram, and you are done. I have three servers running dual xeon processors I have one server running dual 64 bit xeons and server 2003 64 bit version - that acts as a terminal server. All four servers have RAID arrays, etc. I have had ZERO issues with hardware, and I hate to say it, with OS either. In two years on the three servers, the only time they went down was when the power went out longer than the battery UPS. I had a hard drive fail, and the RAID worked as planned. I thus am a Supermicro fan. BTW... The Dell, HP, and Compaq systems have all had issues. My friend who installs servers for Doctor's offices reports of 30 Supermicro "homemade" servers, not one has gone down in 5 years.

I am super happy with my DirecTV TiVo. It has dual tuners (record on both while watching a 3rd that has been recorded, or watch on one and record on the other). I have had it for 2 years. DirecTV recently decided to no longer "market" the TiVo... They still have a contract with TiVo, so if you ask for a TiVo unit they have to sell you one, but otherwise you get the DirecTV knockoff. I have played with my parents Comcast DVR - and it sucks the big one compared to the DirecTV unit... It seems to be missing half the cool features and all the user interface friendliness. I am kind of a computer nerd, but at the same time I like my technology to be 100% seamlessly integrated into my life. I should never have to think about using technology, it should adapt to me... That us what my TiVo is to me. I never have to think about how to control it, it just works intuitively. For an example, I only watch a few TV programs... But I like watching the morning news while getting ready for work. So I have the TiVo programmed to record all the news programs with "save max 1 episode". That way, no matter when I wake up, or get home after work, the news, and only today's news, is ready for me. I typically only watch a few minutes of it, scanning ahead to the weather and important stuff. The time line is very clear and very quick... The Comcast box has a lag time that makes it annoying... You hit rewind and it takes a few seconds to do it... Or, when you hit play, it overshoots... Whereas, the TiVo learns your reaction time, so if you stop a rewind, it will offset a few seconds so it starts where you wanted it to, not where it ended up. But, what makes it so effective is that it is integrated with the DirecTV program guide and tuner... I don't think I would like the stand alone units...

It was a fun video to watch... You could tell you guys were really having fun...

Look at the post I put up at the exact same time... Wierd, huh???