SethInMI

don't go out too strong early. you got to pace yourself

shot

bump (another nostalgia thread!)

Concrete Rebound Hammer's website never goes offline.

geez where ya'll with the replies 18 years ago? for the record, (whatever record the next two weeks make), I did put that Triathlon in the J3 and it was tight and it worked; both are long gone from my care now.

my first post on this site was the last post in its thread (no one replied). I think that bodes well for me winning this thread! From Jan 2006 post in a thread on Triathlon pack volumes: "I have a similar question, so I will just attach to this thread... Will a 190 Triathlon fit in a Javelin J3? It has a pack volume of 420cu. A 168 Pilot has a 416cu pack volume, and a 169 Safire comes in at 452cu, according to the manuf. websites. I can't find any pack volumes for Sabres. The only recommendation on Sunpath's site says 170zp max."

Next year will be the year of the snake. Tonto would have had that as his sig.

it is hard to see what the person buying TSLA at $400 is expecting to get company profits and growth that will support that valuation. Even with Elon cozying up to Trump, the fact remains this is not an EV friendly administration. My guess is people are believing what Elon is saying, that ending the tax credits hurts Tesla less than other manufacturers, so in weird logic that will help Tesla gain market share by forcing others out of the market. Also the stigma of EVs will go down, MAGA-nites will start buying Teslas, and those in the middle will buy what they want which will increasingly be Teslas as they become more price advantaged. One other thing that is likely pushing the stock is the robotaxi and increasing self-driving progress. GM/Cruise just exited the robotaxi market, and Telsa is going full on into it. The thinking is Telsa likely will be the first automaker in the US with wide Level 3 and this will drive sales.

one of my skydiver fb friends now has this as his profile pic, so clearly his un-masking has not damped all popularity.

There is going to be an e-bay style snipe fest in this post as midnight on Dec 31 approaches. then we all find out someone is lazy and the site shuts down Jan 4 or something.

I'm not so sure this will be the eventual consensus take. From the scrapes of his social and a few interviews with people who knew him, it sounds like he had some serious heath issues / chronic pain (back surgery). He does feel more like a Ted Kaczynski that some "you killed my father, prepare to die" revenge story, but that doesn't make him just an entitled rich kid. You make it sound like he was killing prostitutes for fun or something.

it would be appropriate if one or more threads devolved in to DB cooper threads for the rest of the life of this site. DB Cooper forever.

I just passed 19 years as a member of this site. Mostly just lurking; I used to be perversely proud I had more jumps than posts, but that is no longer true. I want to thank @wolfriverjoe and @pchapman and @davelepka and @diverdriver (latter two long gone I assume) for being such good resources, level headed, thorough, and mostly dispassionate in their advice and analysis. (dave could get wound up, but still for many years was a great source of information). I learned so much here.

Agreed. SpaceX is fascinating. Highly motivated people, unique mission, innovative culture, building revolutionary things. Is this sustainable? No. It is great to see Blue Origin as a serious alternative. IMHO Manned spaceflight has always been more about entertainment value than adding to our science knowledge. I see little value to society in putting and keeping people in space or on other planets. Robots are far more suited to space exploration, and colonizing planets is dumb, so if Isaacman works to leaves that to Musk, great (I have no idea if that is his plan; the man on the moon mission is already too far to stop) Having said that, I don't really think most people are aware of the size of Elon's plan for Mars. He wants 1 million people on Mars by 2050, which would have been laughed at 5-10 years ago, but now, he has shown he can build the parts required, massively sized launch vehicles that can be made in large quantities and be reused for low cost launches. I won't say he can't do it, the question is can he find 1 million people willing to go. For me, it's like the old tourist saying "I like to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there"

I am hopeful too. I don't know much about his aims, but likely he will be on the "kill the SLS" bandwagon, which I support. There isn't a reason for it anymore, except to funnel money to the old guard space industry. Love or hate Elon, SpaceX is on the way to far surpassing it.

geez, everyone is coming out of the woodwork.

I think the number of skydivers was small enough that as forum use slowed with options of FB groups it dipped below a critical number and ceased being relevant. Skydiving has a lot of turn-over, many people just stay in for a year or two and that makes the site having to keep pulling in new people, but those new jumpers got re-directed to those local FB groups (Every DZ I know has one) for the socializing aspect. Without the social traffic, there wasn't enough technical discussions happening to keep interest up for noobs and casuals. The fact the site got old didn't help (I know, I know you hated the re-design but I appreciated the fact we could embed pics and vids).

Does the full break sequential have to be all simultaneous? or just everyone has to break grips?

I like Nate Sliver. sometimes he is a little too full of himself, but I like his data driven mindset

I grew up in a Calvinist church, so predestination was def a thing. It's funny when you are inside a group and hear arguments for something they sound reasonable, but then you get older, take step away, and realize they don't make sense. I remember reading an article in the church monthly magazine, where a letter writer asked basically "why do bad things happen to good people?" her friend's child died and she couldn't understand why that would be god's will. The magazine's resident theologian replied that in his view, god had two wills a specific will, which was for good things to happen to good people (as one would expect from a good god). And a more general will, the kind of will that 'held up the universe" like if god took away his general will everything would fall apart or self-destruct or something. That will was pre-destining everything, both good and bad. Well at the time I thought, ok, but later I thought, what a bunch of bullshit. I would say, yes, you are falling into a gamblers fallacy of sorts, if one is a believer in random chance some people will be very unlucky in their lives, and others will be lucky, and the rest of us will have some distribution of luck and unluck.

I thought he said he wanted 3k to keep it going. Not that it costs 3k to keep it going. Maybe it does, or maybe it doesn't. I would be somewhat surprised if this site was losing money (like it was 3k short each month) if it was not sure how he was planning to pitch a sale. "please buy my money losing website with steadily decreasing user base"

I'm curious as to two things: 1. How much does this site actually make in ads per month? 2. How much does it cost to host it? or the real question, what is the ROI on buying it? Joe can you find out? Make an offer real enough to see the financials?

coulda shoulda woulda. c'est la vie. Entertaining to read those first few posts back in 2013. I see your name on one. Did you buy and hold any from back then?

The interesting question is will Trump stop the EV 7.5k lease tax credit interpretation that basically allows anyone to lease any EV and get the credit. Musk has said he doesn't care about the tax credits, but I have to believe that actually he does, as it will impact Tesla sales. Trump had eliminating the credits as a "day one" thing at one point in his campaign, but now? Who knows. My wife has a deposit on a Volvo EV. She got an email from Volvo the day after the election saying "we will be shipping EV30s to the US next month, rather than next summer as we said a few months ago". The reason one assumes is to beat the end of the credits / tariffs, so they aren't holding their breath. We shall see.

Saturday Night Live had a skydive skit last night. Michael Keaton was a depressed tandem instructor and the Please Don't Destroy group played students and another TI that was just "feeling a little off". I thought it was funny.