DSE

Great concept, but again...you won't be able to purchase CDs for that much longer. But the internet makes it much easier to find unique music, no doubt. While *you* might think mainstream music sucks, your opinion has little bearing on music sales or societal views of current music. Your parents or grandparents thought Buddy Holly and Elvis sucked, and were pointless, valueless noise. Just as you (and probably myself too) feel that way about much of the current crop of pop. But sales march on. Title/Artist Units Sold Artist Units Sold 1 Bad Day / Daniel Powter 2,015,594 2 Promiscuous / Nelly Furtado 1,709,274 3 Sexyback / Justin Timberlake 1,657,798 4 Crazy / Gnarls Barkley 1,629,467 5 You’re Beautiful / James Blunt 1,623,417 6 Over My Head (Cable Car) / Fray 1,570,207 7 How to Save a Life / Fray 1,559,704 8 Temperature / Sean Paul 1,533,362 9 Ridin’ / Chamillionaire 1,417,178 10. Hips Don’t Lie / Shakira 1,410,237 Contrary to popular belief...webplay/airplay does *not* equal sales, nor do concerts. For example, Nickelback was the most played airplayed artist of 2006, but they didn't crack the top 50 in sales or concert revenues. The days of super-monster selling artists are over, I think. Shania Twain still holds the record for biggest selling album in the past 20 years with "Come On Over" at 15 million units. No one has come close to that in a long time. The diversity of online music has made it nearly impossible for any artist to achieve those numbers, which of course provides more impetus for artists and labels to protect their property.

I'd love to see Ron Paul as a running mate to Obama. Or Huckabee. Or Guiliani, or... It wouldn't hurt to return to the days of a liberal in one slot and conservative in the other, would it? When did it change, where the VP was always the same party as the Pres?

Little bit of both.

And someone twisted your arm to make you do that, right? In 36 months, there will be no free-standing music stores in the USA, save those that are recyclers (used music) and those too, are suffering badly. Walmart is experimenting with direct-load right now (walk in w/your MP3 device, buy the music right there/load it on the spot). It'll fail, just like their on-line video project failed, but they are experimenting...

thanks for the input John, and for allowing me to demo your Firebird at the boogie. Those jumps really helped me a lot, in figuring out which direction to go. I've made up my mind, pending a responding email from the manufacturer. BTW, did you see your pix from the boogie?

I have been to four DZ's I can think of that had lower passes for tandems and higher pass for funjumpers.

If you truly demo'd several canopies and found only small differences, perhaps you're not truly ready for a new canopy? During the Eloy boogie I jumped: Safire Pilot Crossfire Silhouette Stilleto All approximately the same size. All with monstrously different openings, all with massive differences in flight, turns, speed, flare, and all with desirable and undesirable features of one over another. What I really want is a Katana, but they didn't have a demo.

Try thinking along the lines of having multiple batteries, and always starting each jump with a fresh one. Having your battery kick out on you in the middle of a paid video jump is the definition of unprofessional. Same goes for your video camera. Some guys will brag about how many jumps they can squeeze out of a battery, but all their doing is risking the customers footage by being lazy. Exactly. IMO, if you're any kind of a professional using any kind of battery-operated device, you should have a minimum of two batts for the device, and preferably 3. If you're using a flash with rechargeables, then at least one fresh set, preferably two. Our camera rental rigs go out with 3 batteries, all hot (charged).

Almost... If the customer has BD player with "reasonably" new software (and they're easy to update), then you can burn a no-menu, standard DVD with BD content on it, and burn it on a standard DVD burner. However, if they want a BD disc, we tack 150.00 onto the price of the $75.00 jump. We've had two groups thus far, for a total of 5 Blu-ray discs delivered to tandem students. it's a short window. For the next season, we'll be able to keep this premium price in place. 2009, probably not.

No one can legally tell you that he's correct. :-) Side note;November reports of BD sales came out...70% of the High Def sales were BD. December is expected to be stronger. What sucks is that DVDSP still doesn't fully support BD yet, so having to use Adobe Encore and other tools.

IDX makes a statement on the broadcast batteries. As you can see, it won't really affect skydiving videographers very much. It's gonna be a HUGE PITA for my company on some of our shoots though. What we're gonna do to get around some of this, is carry an extra charger. Batteries installed on "devices" aren't counted, and chargers are "devices."

Wow. that sucks. Even Costco has TB drives in the high 200's, IIRC. I won't miss the two CompUSA's here, they had lousy customer service on top of everything else. And their prices were never all that great. But the store is fun to walk through.

If my family dynamic is relevant at all to the book, it's pretty messed up. Reverse second and first child, put third child as "only child." My siblings and I are each 5 years apart.

Nah, you must have been hallucinating. Skydivers would never jump through clouds. The rules say so.

There are several companies making cases for this little camera.

A few more pix/galleries; http://www.spottedeagle.com/Skydive/Eloy/index.html http://www.spottedeagle.com/Skydive/eloy2/index.html You might find yourself in some of the pix. I don't know who everyone was, so just took a random sampling of some of my favorite shots. Not a lot of aerial pix; the wingsuiters got me hooked and I'm not ready to wear a camera and a wingsuit just yet.

I'd have posted similar pix, but someone seems to have borrowed my CX7, since you were being stingy with yours.

If you ever get the opportunity, get Norman Kent to relate the story about a time he and Deanna grounded themselves due to how music impacted her deployment altitude during freestyle jumps. It's quite a story...especially given their skill levels, even back then.

CompUSA is no more. They are now owned by a liquidator. In 90 days, all stores will be shut down. I was informed via PM that pricing is somewhat variable from store to store. I bought a Swiss Army backpack, reg price 109.00 for 24.55 today. But some stuff wasn't all that great, for instance 8GB ExtremeIII cards were still 140.00 after discount.

I gotta disagree. Completely. Getting it "right" in freefall is very important, no doubt. However, to ignore the tools available to photographers today is simply wrong. Mike McGowan is a monster photoshopper. He takes very good images and turns them into artwork. So does Norman Kent. So does most any professional ground photographer. Even though my tandem and four-way images are getting to where I'm finally feeling somewhat good about them, I still use Pshop to intensify colors, bring out shadows, crop if not entirely centered, etc. With large megapixel cameras, there is nothing wrong with re-framing a shot. You're better undershooting and cropping than overshooting and inadvertently cutting something off. Sometimes, the shot isn't achievable from where you are, but you wanna get the best you can when you can, and image processing helps make it the best it can be. I really would like to see one of your vids, if for no reason other than to give myself and others a benchmark to strive for.

Dunno if it applies in your area, but CompUSA is going out of business, and today I was able to buy 1TB drives for $149.00 each, Western Digital MyBook. not the Premium Edition II with the loud fans, but the original MyBook (but it needs open air, as while it's quiet, it's HOT).

Tape? TAPE?? Who shoots on TAPE anymore???? http://www.dropzone.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=94225;

They'll both survive. BD was on a very serious race to the finish line when HD DVD decided to red-ink 100M to buy the market, selling more HD DVD units in ONE DAY than they'd sold in the entire previous year, at a price of $99.00. Hell, i already had one at the office, and bought two, one for home and one as a gift. BD still outsells HD DVD by almost 2:1 at the disc, and outrents HD DVD by almost 4:1 But...HD DVD gained serious traction, and PS3 hasn't turned into more BD sales. However....the smart money is still on BD. All the industry analysts think so, and the retailers are betting same. Go to Walmart (who doesn't really like BD) and see that there are more BD discs than HD DVD discs. All the great Disney stuff is on BD, not HD DVD, and the BD "Packs" launched in November have been tremendously successful. BD is more forward looking, greater capacity, greater underlying code, much better open-options for authoring, pretty much better everything except for two factors, both significant; ~BD costs more to replicate (manufacture) ~BD playback machines cost more than HD DVD (at some point, Toshiba has got to regain their profit margin, however). Bear in mind that buying HD DVD burners is all but impossible. I've bet on BD, we've delivered the first-ever skydiving DVDs to tandem clients back in July. We're charging a whomping premium to burn HD on BD discs to tandem students as an option (or we can burn BD-compliant media on a standard DVD w/no menus, for the same cost as a standard DVD). So...while I can't confirm you're absolutely right (in the male sense) I'll say you're absolutely right (in the female sense).

I did read the article(s), I did watch the news report, I did speak with a friend in the AG's office. The former AG was on the news saying this is "troubling". The meetings were recorded on the citizen's dime, not the private dime of the governor himself. Why would "personal, religious" meetings have been recorded in the first place? No, they weren't meeting at the Governor's residence. Leavitt wasn't living in the mansion at the time, just as Huntsman is not living there now. it is a state-owned building, that was under renovation at the time, and only select rooms were useable. As only some rooms at the State Capital were useable, due to it being under its first earthquake renovations as well (by coincidence, today it just reopened after the second renovation). Cut it as you will, they discussed state business in context with religion in a meeting of the governors staff. Considering that Leavitt and Romney are interchangeable... Until Bush, we've not had an outspoken "God put me in the White House" president in my lifetime. While I'd never vote for Huckabee, I also don't think he'd be a "God put me here" guy. Romney will. He believes he's part of the Mormon prophecy, just as his dad did, just as Leavitt believed Orin Hatch was.

A- Mitt Romney and Mike Leavitt are good ole' buddies. No secret there. Leavitt played a significant role in Romney achieving his status in the 2002 Olympics. B-I have a problem when any faith in the USA gathers as a governor's staff, to determine how they can best infuse their faith into government roles. Particularly when they, as government staff in their official capacity, openly state that they believe that "Clinton was placed in the White House by Satan" and "God will assist Orin Hatch in his bid for the presidency." Those sorts of comments do not belong in state government meetings, paid for by citizens, recorded as part of the daily meetings of the governor, during sessions designed to frame daily activities of the governor's staff. C-Leavitt has tried to hide the contents of these meetings, not much differently than how Hilary has hidden some of her actions during Clinton's presidency. However, Hilary doesn't have a buffer of "lying for the Lord," she just lies. The people attending the meetings were meeting as policy makers for the state of Utah, not meeting to discuss their individual thoughts on Mormonism. I don't care if it's Mormon, Muslim, or Mountain Dew worshipper. A caucus in a bathroom or Governors Mansion to specifically discuss how their faith may be infused into government operations is wrong. I tie Romney to the story because Leavitt and Romney are cut from the same cloth, Leavitt has helped Romney campaign, they were tight in the Governors Conference, they're both ultra-conservatives, they're golfing buddies, and yes...they're of the same religion, attending the same temple sessions, meeting with the same high leadership in the church. I don't believe Mr. Romney can separate his devotion to the LDS faith any more than Leavitt was able to.