MarkM
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Everything posted by MarkM
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Printers are probably THE hardest thing to setup in Linux.
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Total 100% agreement. Why would I want to spend my time with someone who plays childish games? Pass.
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Here's Waterloo Indiana. I still remember the "look for Dolly" advice for spotting the DZ.
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My favorite is a fable called The Princess: A man was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, "If you kiss me, I'll turn into a beautiful Princess." The man bent over, picked up the frog and put it in his pocket. The frog spoke up again and said, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful Princess, I will stay with you for a week." The man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog called out yet again, "If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful Princess, I'll stay with you and do anything you ask." Again the man took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally the frog asked, "What is it? I've told you I'm a beautiful Princess, that I'll stay with you for as long as you like and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?" The man looked at the frog and replied, "Look, I'm a programmer. I don't have time for girlfriends, but a talking frog is really cool."
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OMG, that is so true.
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So says the man that jumps out of perfectly good airplanes....
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if you use Windows XP - READ THIS NOW!!! (not a joke)
MarkM replied to mountainman's topic in The Bonfire
Here's a step by step tutorial on upgrading to Windows XP service pack 1. It may help if you've had problems upgrading to SP1 before. http://www.trwhotfilez.kit.net/xpsp1/xpsp1.html -
Hey look, a Cypres debate!
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I think if you look at the stats students usually die due to either: 1> Not making a decision. 2> Making a very wrong decision. So I think many instructors try to keep the emergency instructions down to basics. Yes the reserve may not work, but that possibility is probably far less than having a student just sit under a bad main until impact. Maybe that type of person doesn't belong in the sport in the first place, but unfortunately you can't tell that by looking at them and they end up in those situations anyway.
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The standards on motorcycle helmets aren't required. I don't have to wear a helmet with a SNELL rating, it's just an option if I want to pay for it. Depending on the state I can wear a pro-tech if I wanted. But my Arai SNELL helmet is craploads better than any pro-tech. Just saying it'd be nice to have something similair someday. I mean, you buy a rig or chute and you know safety was the #1 design consideration behind it. I'm sure Mirage, Sunpath, Javelin, etc would stand behind the safety of their gear any day of the week. It's just weird that helmets are treated differently.
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That doesn't mean it had anything to do with the certification, unless the company falsely certified their helmet. One of the problems with lawsuit antecdotes is you don't know any of the details. 90% of the products in your house have certifications, many deal with safety. Check the bottom of the keyboard you're typing on, odds are it has certs stamped all over it.
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No. They don't. They'll gladly tell you that too. It's very likely that they never will. Testing would open them up for liability should a "tested and certified" helmet cause (or worsen) an injury or death. No skydiving equipment manufacturer is likely to open themselves up to even more possibility of a lawsuit than they already deal with. I don't get this arguement. Motorcycle helmets are tested to federal and international standards and it doesn't open them up to liability issues. I can certainly understand why a specific company won't state the safety of their helmets, I mean why open yourself up to liability when no one else will? But why isn't there any effort to come up with a standard for safer skydiving helmets? A helmet company wouldn't ever have to say, "our helmets are safe" they'd only need to stand behind their helmet meeting a certain standard(and only then if they stamped their helmet with the standards logo).
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I wonder how long it would take PD to make this thing!
MarkM replied to Viking's topic in The Bonfire
At least you could find it easily if you had to chop it. Assuming you'd want to find it. -
4th or 5th jump I put my hands out during a PLF. The cracked wrist bones only kept me down a couple weeks. 7th jump I did a forward loop on a SL exit. My legs got caught up in the lines of my deploying main, the opening shock left me with a black and blue leg and a nasty scar(healed after a year). Also suffered from Muenkel tunnel syndrome last March. Currently I'm down with something wrong with my right ear. Don't know if jumping caused it or just made it worse. Right now I'm wondering if something like hang gliding, while probably more dangerous, might not be easier on the body.
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AFF - first 2 or 3 jumps with 2 instructors, the rest with 1. 7 or 8 levels. AFP - start off with a couple tandems, then onto an AFF like program only with 1 instructor. I think it generally has more levels than AFF too, even after you get past the tandems. AFP probably varies a lot from DZ to DZ.
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I don't think it's so much about altitude as predictability and planning. You can pull at 10k if you want so long as the exit was planned around not having anyone falling down on top of you.
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1> I value my solitarity. 2> I don't make friends quickly, but those I do make I keep for a long time(have one friendship going on 17 years now). 3> I snack on dry cheerios, eating handfulls straight out of the box when I get the munchies. I've probably gone through 2 boxes a week for the past 25 years. 4> I sent 7 years in college but never graduated. 5> I have problems learning human languages, but know 10-15 computer ones and can learn them just by reading them. 6> I'm pretty laid back. Life type things that stress everyone else I know just don't matter to me. It's all about the Big Picture.
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Did a couple DZs as a student and always had problems hearing the radio, except at one place. There they taped the radio to the top of the helmet, speaker facing down. I was always able to hear the radio at that dropzone.
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This isn't even AFF or SL or anything, just tandeming. The lady tandemed with them before, a friend volunteered to do sign for her on the instructions. She enjoyed it so much she put together a group of 16 deaf people to also do a tandem. She was just put off by the DZ not hiring an interpreter for the group. The DZs position is that written instructions/subtitled videos are enough(and it's worked well in the past) and the cost of the intepreter is 400 bucks, twice the cost of a tandem. Too bad there's no local organization that just couldn't volunteer the time for an interpreter. The sad thing is this could've been great PR for the DZ. What local paper wouldn't want to do a story on 16 deaf people making a skydive?
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Yeah. The sad thing is the most interesting people around are those that live outside the stereotypes. By lumping people together as "guys are this" or "girls are that" you can close your mind off to exploring some truly fascinating people.
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Sounds like kind of a cool idea. I cracked my wrists when I put my hands out during a "real" PLF on my 6th jump or so. We all end up needing to PLF sometime, why not teach it properly on the first couple jumps? When they show they can PLF, let em stand it up.
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I think PISA and PD use different measuring systems on their canopies. A Tempo 150 packs smaller than a PD 143, possibly because the sizes really aren't so different. On the flip side I believe the Tempo is heat treated, so it performs a little more like a ZP. So even if you bought a PD and Tempo that really were the same size, they'd probably jump differently. Please note the heavy use of thinks, possiblies and I believes in the above. These are things I've heard before and I'd love for someone with more knowledge than me to clarify the differences between these canopies.
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S/L isn't "superior", they're probably about equal. If you would've asked this question 2 years ago the SL'ers would probably be defending SL against the AFFers saying it was old and outdated. The thinking then was that SL didn't teach freefall skills very well and AFF produced "better" skydivers because they were training freefall since jump 1. But today the thinking is that canopy skills are what's keeping people alive so the more jumps SL gives you is considered a benefit. Personally I think it's a wash. It's the instructor more than the training method.
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The "obsessed about skydiving, must buy anything related to skydiving" is probably a normal phase of skydiving. Hopefully I'm not the only dork that has a bunch of skydiving tshirts sitting around in his closet.
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A whuffo wouldn't know what it was or care about wearing one. But how about the girl who's been doing manifest for two years but doesn't jump? She's not allowed to wear one because she's not a real skydiver or something? I always thought the necklaces were a way to just show a love of the sport.