tkhayes

CClean is fairly well know and fairly well used. Pretty legit stuff.

you almost contradict yourself. God is part of the culture and Judeo-Christian, but God does not mean "Christianity" ?? I find that confusing and I am sure the Buddhists, the Sikhs, the Muslims and the Wiccans would disagree with you - as they all have the same religious freedoms granted by the constitution, but they have no knowledge of anyone named "Almighty God" or for that matter "Supreme Being" And the Constitution nor the state versions do not have a definition of those terms. I would suggest that the majority of "Christians" in the USA, that propose that we have such "Judeo-Christian" heritage, and want to see government run more closely to those values are actually talking about THEIR Christian God, from the standard Bible we see in circulation. And that is evident in the pushes for ID in schools, (They ain't talkin' about the Mormon version are they?), prayers in government sessions (also no Muslim prayers right?), Signs posted all over Pasco County here in FL that say "Jesus this and that". You cannot have it both ways - to say we have roots in Judeo-Christian beliefs and therefore we must follow those, and then follow through with ONLY Christian values in government when the Constitution clearly forbids it. Christianity has harmed PLENTY of people. burning witches, slavery, wars fought in the name of 'God', and even most recently, 'purple Kool-Aid' and Branch Davidians conducting child rape. And I am not at all afraid of offending thin-skinned fanatics, - but yes, maybe some people are. But that simply reinforces my point - if you do away with all of it, then you have no one left to offend. BINGO! - we have a winner....

judeo-christian heritage my ass. I am sick of that phony excuse. tens of thousands of Chinese also helped to found this country. The native Americans were actually here FIRST - with absolutely NO Christian beliefs of any kind (of course until we enslaved, slaughtered, threatened and intimidated/conquered them) The pseudo 'heritage' that you talk about also enslaved hundreds of thousands of people for centuries. Why was THAT not written into the Constitution....? If we were found on Christian values and 'God' is the soul purpose of our existence, I expect they would have written that in the Constitution in the first place. But they did not. For a specific reason, probably MANY specific reasons. And were pretty friggin' smart guys, despite what anyone might think. Now KNOCK IT OFF.......we separated church and state - and every Supreme Court pretty much from now to the falling of this nation is going to uphold those values.... I live in a country of laws - governed by the Constitution - not in a country of Bibles, where the law does not really matter if you simply 'believe' in some hokey-deity.

you can get a new hard drive for cheap, probably $60 or so, have 120-320Gb of space and most likely a faster drive. But once you put in a 5400rpm drive and max out your memory for the machine, that is about the last upgrades that you can do to it. Might buy you another year or two of use. Simple programs like Acronis and such can image you old drive and restore it to the new drive, expanding the partition size as they do it, or maybe your local geek shop can do it all for you as well. www.dell.com. New 1545 laptops for about $400 or so. My wife got one and it is a pretty nice machine I must say.

define the 'real cost' as you put it. how often do you replace line sets, who does the work. how often do you replace canopies? How often do you inspect and touch up the rigs? Flaps, velcro, handles, knobs, tacking, general condition, washing. who does that work? Who does 8 year inspections? How much is a reserve repack and what exactly gets done during that interval? How much does that cost? WHat about AAD's and batteries, inspection cycles and costs, who does that work? And last, who oversees all that to make sure that all that is being done? I would like to know how you do all that for under $20 per jump. If you have the secret, then please share it with us, because I will save thousands every year on maintenance.

I made a quick one with a quart size bag and blue painters tape instead of duct tape. sometimes you need a gallon size bag. Make a duct tape loop for your fingers/hand. You can either make a loop for your forearm, or just tape it around your jumpsuit. Duct tape the bag up as much as needed - you can completely cover the bag in duct tape if you want. Don't forget to add the ashes first. This works really well in freefall, as you can extend your arm to keep the ashes out of your face. A couple shakes and it is all gone. When you tear the top tab, it will tear the plastic bag easily.

duct tape and a freezer grade zip-lok bag. Make a duct tape 'zipper' - two strips of duct tape along each side of the top of the bag where the 'zip' part of the bag is, leave a 2" tab of duct tape off one end. Put another duct tape strip below that on both sides of the bag but leave a small 1/4" gap of just plastic bag. do not overlap the duct tape there. Duct tape the bag to your arm for the release. usually left arm if you are right-handed. When you grab the duct tape at the top of the bag using the tab you made, you can simply tear the bag open with the top duct tape zipper and it will come apart really easy in freefall and dump the contents. sorry do not have a picture of one to show you, but they take 10 minutes to make, if that

Done a bunch of scuba diving in Grand Cayman. THe north wall is something like that. 80-100' deep. you drop onto the flat. Coral ridge up and over a bit and then a vertical drop some 6000' pretty much straight down. It is the coolest thing to go over the edge. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfnSyvmIhhY on a bad day the visibility is 60', on a good day, the vis is over 100'. Saw hammerhead shark out there, lots of morays not my video but I have swam through that channel and out over the edge. 1:45 or so in the video, you come to the edge. The video does not do it justice - it is like stepping off into the abyss (well it IS actually stepping off into the abyss)

there's the old saying "That guy tracks like a set of car keys...." I think it is everywhere; good and bad. I teach my up-and-comings that next to pulling, tracking is the most important skill you will ever learn. get out of Dodge when it is time to open and it is a lot of fun too.

heat-dehydration-fitting the harness-breathing, body shape and size-cutting off circulation etc All factors in passing out in the harness. while it is rare, it does happen Bottom line, if you continue skydiving, a regular parachute harness for solo jumps fits quite different from the tandem harness. and it is much more comfortable. I do not know of anyone that ever passed out in a regular skydiving harness unless they had some underlying medical condition.

Yes, but even the dictators of SOuth America who kill thousands, do not get brought to justice until they are old and frail. If they do at all. It is a sad state of our country when someone can stand up and say they violated some statue, and not have anyone do anything about it. Pol Pot, another one. house arrest basically for killing hundreds of thousands of people. We torture, we will pay the price, but GWB and Chaney will not - you can bet on it. Just sign another document in the White House to say that it's OK if we do it and we do not have to follow the rules. Look at how many people went after Clinton when he lied about a blowjob..... We start wars and no one does fuck all - shame on ALL the Congress and Senate for not acting on this with some fucking balls.

THat may be true now, but once the economy re-collapses (my own personal guess), there will be so many unemployed that they just might have a lot of time on their hands to do just that - not just wars, but the corporations, health care, all that good stuff. The corporate model of finding your labor at the bottom line price, and cutting jobs might just backfire on them.....i.e. the French Revolution. Also my own prediction that eventually we will see something similar in the this country. But first the rich must get much more rich and obnoxious, and the poor must get to a point of destitute.

I prefer stopping a war the old-fashioned way as well, grass roots protests with a half million people on the steps of the Capitol Building and Congress voting for what the people actually want - no war. The fact that Americans are so disconnected from it is reason number 147 why we should not be there. If we are going to fight wars, perhaps a Constitutional Amendment that says a DRAFT must be in place for every war we fight. That would bring a pretty good halt to it all. Or a victory, whichever. How many Congressmen and Senators children are in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I just got the same email - TK Z-Hills

we would put 15 in ours at Claresholm Alberta in the early 80's. Looking back at it that was probably not a good idea. The plane was really well maintained, so it was in great shape. I have seen some that are plain scary and I would not want to be in. Beech 18 is a great plane, IF it is well taken care of, but it is also an airplane that i would not want to be in during an engine failure or during a stall. I think Nouvel Aire in PQ has two of them, since retired mostly as they contract Turbines now. A lot of them were built in the 30's and 40's, wow - bad enough that we are jumping out of Cessnas from the 50's and Turbines from the 60's.

cosmetic can cost a lot on a motorcycle. I did the same thing to a guy 10 years ago, barely touched the bike, - it tipped over. He was pissed, but I paid for all the damage at the shop of his choice - came to just under $1000

Hey, say hi to my brother out there when you see him OK?

sorry to correct you, but we bin our mains after about 1000 jumps, that is all they are good for. line sets every 400 or so jumps and by the third line set those canopies are trashed. And we charge $65 to rent a tandem rig, including the packing, So that is our 'real world' we spend upwards of $2000/year per tandem rig on maintenance. Renting a tandem rig for less than $50 is probably a money losing proposition. 1000 tandems should generate $50,000 or so in profit for the dropzone, otherwise your pricing structure is also messed up. If you cannot afford $5000 of that for maintenance and/or a new main canopy over that time period, then I expect your business needs some level of re-evaluation to see what is working and where your money is going.

Got this cool picture from a friend.....

I called the skydivingorlando.com phone number and got a polite lady you said it was $199 plue $99 for the video and I would either be jumping at Titusville or Mulberry. The way to stop these is to stop the DZs from supporting them. Write or email the DZOs and get on their case. Let them know that you disapprove. She answered the phone "American Adventures", but the website logos the American Skydiving Network and of course the URL is also just as misleading. www.bbb.org, Skyride still gets a Failing grade.....

I grew up listening to his "Kids say the darndest things..." series on the radio. It was as funny as shit

Surprised? Not at all Disturbed? Very much so

I see it turned into the 'JESUS' thread as well....

wow, this thread is still going??

there are small anomalies with some computers and DVD players alike and not all of them play all DVDs burned on different systems Try using a computer to make a copy of the DVD, sometimes I have had the copy work whereas the original would not - who the f*** knows why. Or if you have Roxio or Nero software, sometimes you can try to create an ISO file from the original DVD. then you use the ISO file to create more DVDs, and sometimes they work. TO save the video files, you need DVD Ripper software, www.downloads.com, but if your computer will not play the DVD, it may not read it either. Last, pull the DVD player right out of your computer, find the exact model #, go to the internet, make the sure the latest firmware is installed for the burner, and try again. these things make me crazy too, but again - they do happen and there no no reason other than gremlins....