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A definition, from Wikipedia: "Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people, and especially from an online community, rather than from traditional employees or suppliers." This is a message, and some advice, to those who may post to dropzone.com for the first time, or for those who seldom post until there is a perceived problem. On occasion there is a person who posts a question or comment that seems a bit suspicious to those of use that have frequented dz.com for some time. The wording of their question leads us to believe that they are posting the question for a reason that is different than its outward appearance. Often this person does not identify themselves by filling in their dz.com "profile", therefore making us suspicious of their intent. Usually when someone does this, it creates many questions for the poster, from people trying to determine the reason for the post. The questions and attitude about the questions have been "crowdsourced" so to speak, by taking the collective knowledge of the dz.com community. And there are some pretty darned smart people here, as well as being very knowledgeable about skydiving. If you make such a post, please do not get offended if people ask a lot of questions, and question your motivation. The collective questioning and suspicion is legitimate and reasonable. What seems to be the questions of an individual are most often the questions of the community. That individual just happens to be the first person to ask those questions. .

Funny! Obama supporters were impressed by his achievements in public healthcare, international diplomacy and economic recovery. Trump supporters are impressed by his ability to troll.

Any further posts that are just talking about other posters and not the topic at hand will find the poster on a temporary ban from the site. Any posts that are just reposting of the same pictures that were linked to in the last few posts will also find their accounts on a temporary ban. This thread was reopened to have a civil discussion on the topic - not to allow posters to throw insults at each other or spam the forum with the same photos time after time.

If you have raised kids (or been one), and gone through the pet syndrome, including toilet flush burials of dead goldfish, the story that follows will have you laughing out LOUD! Overview: I had to take my son's lizard to the vet. Here's what happened: Just after dinner one night, my son came up to tell me there was "something wrong" with one of the two lizards he holds prisoner in his room. "He's just lying there looking sick," he told me. "I'm serious, Dad. Can you help?" I put my best lizard-healer expression on my face and followed him into his bedroom. One of the little lizards was indeed lying on his back, looking stressed. I immediately knew what to do... "Honey," I called, "come look at the lizard!" "Oh, my gosh!" my wife exclaimed. "She's having babies." "What!?" my son demanded. "But their names are Bert and Ernie, Mom!" I was equally outraged. "Hey, how can that be? I thought we said we didn't want them to reproduce," I said accusingly to my wife. "Well, what do you want me to do, post a sign in their cage?" she inquired. (I think she actually said this sarcastically!) "No, but you were supposed to get two boys!" "Yeah, Bert and Ernie!" my son agreed. "Well, it's just a little hard to tell on some guys, you know," she informed me. (Again with sarcasm!) By now, the rest of the family had gathered to see what was going on. I shrugged, deciding to make the best of it. "Kids, this is going to be a wondrous experience," I announced. "We're about to witness the miracle of birth." "Oh, gross!" they shrieked. We peered at the patient. After much struggling, what looked like a tiny foot would appear briefly, vanishing a scant second later. "We don't appear to be making much progress," I noted. "It's breech," my wife whispered, horrified. "Do something, Dad!" my son urged. "Okay, okay." Squeamishly, I reached in and grabbed the foot when it next appeared, giving it a gentle tug. It disappeared. I tried several more times with the same results. "Should I call 911?" my eldest daughter wanted to know. "Maybe they could talk us through the trauma." (You see a pattern here with the females in my house?) "Let's get Ernie to the vet," I said grimly. We drove to the vet with my son holding the cage in his lap. "Breathe, Ernie, breathe," he urged. The vet took Ernie back to the examining room and peered at the little animal through a magnifying glass. "What do you think, Doc, a C-section?" I suggested scientifically. "Oh, very interesting," he murmured. "Mr. and Mrs. Cameron, may I speak to you privately for a moment?" I gulped, nodding for my son to step outside. "Is Ernie going to be okay?" my wife asked. "Oh, perfectly," the vet assured us. "This lizard is not in labor. In fact, that isn't EVER going to happen...Ernie is a boy. You see, Ernie is a young male. And occasionally, as they come into maturity, like most male species, they um...um...masturbate. Just the way he did, lying on his back." He blushed, glancing at my wife. We were silent, absorbing this. "So, Ernie's just...just...excited," my wife offered. "Exactly," the vet replied, relieved that we understood. More silence. Then my vicious, cruel wife started to giggle. And giggle. And then laugh loudly. Tears were now running down her face. "It's just that...I'm picturing you pulling on its...its...teeny little..." She gasped for more air to bellow in laughter once more. "That's enough," I warned. We thanked the vet and hurriedly bundled the lizard and our son back into the car. He was glad everything was going to be okay. "I know Ernie's really thankful for what you did, Dad," he told me. "Oh, you have NO idea," my wife agreed, collapsing again with laughter. Two lizards: $140 One Cage: $50 Trip to the vet: $30 Memory of husband pulling on a lizard's winkie: Priceless!! Moral of the story: Pay attention in biology class. Lizards lay eggs!

Nope. In all the air disasters I have looked at, only two that I can think of (TWA 800 and JAL 123) would there even be a slight chance of getting out and making your situation any better. And you'd have to be wearing your rig when the incident occurred (with no warning) and be VERY lucky to be able to exit without getting killed or incapacitated. Keep in mind that for that parachute to do any good you have to have: 1) a situation where everyone is certainly going to die (if not it's always better to stay with the plane, just based on the odds) 2) a way to exit (a big hole or a blown hatch or something) 3) a stable enough aircraft that you can use that exit.

20kN has it right. I will add if the plane is not depressurized, you won't be able to open the emergency doors. If it is depressurized, but still at high altitude, you will have to stay on oxygen to function, and so it would be hard to get to a door unless you are right next to it, and it would have to be an over-wing hatch door. I do think you could get out of a hatch with your rig on. So you need two events: 1. A plane that is depressurized 2. A plane that cannot fly If both of these are true, there has probably been a catastrophic air-frame failure, most likely a terrorist attack or a really bad engine failure that damaged the wing / tail and the fuselage, so in addition to having to deal with oxygen and getting to a hatch and opening it and getting out into a very high slipstream (300+mph?) the plane could be spinning or tumbling as well, a very challenging situation. You would want to stay on oxygen until below 20k ft, or try to hyperventilate on oxygen before exiting.

Well since you are fucking deaf you would not realize how loud the Skyvan is, it is "deafening", therefore the "Dive 'til you're deaf".

All mods now have privileges for every forum under the new design - they are no longer just monitoring a subset anymore. Even easier than sending a message is using the new "Report" feature, when this happens it automatically sends a notification to every moderator that a post needs looked at and we can do a one click option to mark the poster as a spammer and it removes all their posts and prevents them from posting anymore. Filters can be looked to to prevent certain types of posts - for example anything with the phrase "WhatsApp"' might be safe to filter since not a lot of posters use that in a normal post but lots of spammers do.

More than 50% of road maintenance is paid for by general taxes - income, property, sales etc etc. So EV owners are indeed contributing to road maintenance via their taxes. However, I'd be all for a road tax based on vehicle weight rather than on gallons of gas used, since vehicle weight is the #1 factor in vehicle road damage and wear.

The rig certainly is not presumed airworthy for 180 days. It is presumed airworthy at the time it is inspected/packed. If the owner goes out and spills battery acid on it 10 minutes after he leaves my loft then it is unairworthy. Clearly marking the packing data card that an AAD expires on a given date and should not be considered compliant/airworthy at that point I don't consider as unreasonable. If the owner is having card inspected at DZ and this is marked clearly - then the DZ employee can record this date as expiry. When that date arrives they can check to see if the AAD has been removed or replaced.

You're putting yourself at risk... I recall asking my rigger about this before I became a rigger, and he said he wouldn't pack a rig if the battery or unit was going to go out of date (4-yr check) during a repack cycle, at that time 120 days. I wouldn't either. It's not worth it. You can try and justify it to yourself all day long. It makes no difference. All it will take is for an incident to happen, an attorney to do some digging and a sympathetic jury to convict...